


sugar pills (maybe they don't work at all)

by forestdivinity (ForestDivinity)



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe, Canonical Character Death, Canonical Child Abuse, Drug Addiction, Eventual Happy Ending, Family Bonding, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Klaus Hargreeves-centric, Number Five | The Boy-centric, Underage Drug Use
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-11
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:22:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 32,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27499372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ForestDivinity/pseuds/forestdivinity
Summary: Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.-In another universe, Five Hargreeves ends up as many things - timetraveller, assassin, saviour of the universe (damnation of the universe), eternally overworked adult, and eternal child - but that's another life.In this universe, he's a little bit more afraid (of himself? Of his powers? Of Reginald Hargreeves?) and a little more prone to seeking comfort from his family. What he can't get from his Father, he'll find somewhere else. And so instead of running into an apocalypse, Five Hargreeves runs into Four's room and steals what's left of a baggie of weed. It is large in his own small hands, his fingers shake as he pries the plastic open.It spirals into a life of addiction he can't control, one counted in the bottoms of bottles and the sound of his brother laughing (crying) by his side.Maybe it's not the easiest life but it's the one he's living.Somehow, he still manages to stop the Apocalypse along the way (he never even knows it).
Relationships: Klaus Hargreeves & Everyone, Number Five | The Boy (Umbrella Academy) & Everyone
Comments: 118
Kudos: 157





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Sugar Pills by IDKHow

_Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live._

* * *

They are thirteen when the universe ripples and cracks and (for once in its great existence) does not right itself. It happens like this:

When they are thirteen, The Boy, also known as Five Hargreeves argues with his Father about time travel over dinner. It is the wrong place, wrong hour, wrong discussion but Five insists on broaching the topic anyway. 

"A spatial jump is trivial when compared with the unknowns of time travel. One is like sliding along the ice, the other is akin to descending blindly into the depths of the freezing water and reappearing as an acorn." His Father tells him and ends the discussion with a familiar aching glare. His stomach turns.

_That makes no sense_ , he thinks. 

_It would if you were smarter_ , another voice inside of him replies. The echoes of a conversation he may never have.

He's just a child.

When he is rejected he curls his hands into fists and shouts at his Father in a way that few of them would dare (himself, Klaus, one day Diego but not yet - not while his stutter is still bold enough to be called an issue). Something spiteful curls into his stomach as he stares down Reginald Hargreeves, defiant despite his young age. It encourages him to move, to run, to prove him wrong.

"I can do it. I'm ready." He says. 

"This conversation is over, Number Five." His Father tells him, and Five thinks about leaving for good, just to be contrary.

In one universe he follows that urge out their front door and pushes his powers to their limits. He jumps and jumps and jumps until he ends up in a wasteland most aptly called The Apocalypse. One version of himself stays here for forty-five years, countless others die before they make it that far.

This universe is none of them. 

There is a fundamental difference - in this universe, Five doesn't run out the front door, he runs up the stairs instead, legs unsteady and tears he won’t admit to filling up his eyes. In this universe, he's a little bit more afraid (of himself? Of his powers? Of Reginald Hargreeves?) and a little more prone to seeking comfort from his family. What he can't get from his Father, he'll find somewhere else. And so instead of running into an apocalypse, Five Hargreeves runs into Four's room and steals what's left of a baggie of weed. It is large in his own small hands, his fingers shake as he pries the plastic open.

_This life is not meant to be lived_ , he thinks as the fragrant scent hits his nose, _we are merely surviving_. 

* * *

Five tells himself to apologise to Klaus for it later but never gets the chance - there's no reason to after all. When Klaus bursts into his own bedroom door ten minutes later and sees Five struggling to roll a joint with unpractised hands he's not mad - in fact, he seems elated. His brother throws up his hands and grins as he kicks the door shut behind him, a not uncommon occurrence. Everything in Four's room seems slightly broken, from the dents in the door to the wallpaper peeling off the wall. It is hard to tell what is intentional and what is simply decay, spreading out from Klaus's soul to everything around him.

And isn't that a morbid thought? No wonder Klaus always acts so animated, it's all a careful distraction. Delight to cover the despair and all that, Five can relate.

Five's hands are still shaking, but he relaxes when Klaus breathes out "Fucking finally" and "Give that here before you fuck it up." Five feels a kinship with his brother that he's never felt before. Klaus shuts down his apologies without giving Five a chance to even form the words in his head. 

It's not a bad feeling at all. 

They end up in the attic because it's the last place their Father always looks. Not because he thinks they won't be here, he just hates ducking his head on the final stairs, and they all know it. Reginald is still taller than all of them, though Luther and Klaus are both catching up fast. Luther grows up and out, bulking up with his weight routine and training. Klaus simply grows up and up like a beanstalk, skinny enough that a strong wind would knock him over.

Usually, it's his own clumsiness causing problems though, like when he almost falls out of the window entirely, swaying back and forth with a familiar manic grin on his face. It doesn't quite meet his eyes.

Klaus's hands shake too, a constant fine tremor that he's long since learnt to adapt to.

At one point, Five remembers, Klaus had been a sweet child. His smiles had been genuine and mostly kind, interspersed with the occasional mischievous smirks all children have when annoying their siblings. Over the years, things changed, Klaus's smile became like the crack of a whip - sharp and cutting to the point of brutality. Five can relate to that.

He's angry at Reginald Hargreeves (he will always be angry with Reginald Hargreeves), and it burns through his bones the same way the smoke fills his lungs. Poisonous, bitter, and yet not unwelcome. Five wants to sink into that anger. Wants to throw his rage out of the confines of his body and let it tear down all the walls around him - it’s not fair that only Klaus get to destroy - but then Klaus throws an arm around his shoulders with a guffaw of laughter that's more pain than pleasure, and he lets himself be content in this little rebellion.

Reginald has already made it clear what he thinks of Klaus and his 'drug habit'. All of them know that Klaus sneaks wine and whiskey to his room, that he's been doing it for years now. None of them ask why. Five wonders if it's because they don't want to know or if it's because they already do and just don't want to admit the truth. He knows it isn't healthy, he's heard their Mom talk about 'the effects alcohol has on a growing body', has listened to their Father berate Klaus again and again for his weaknesses. He listens, and he buries his concerns in the basement of his stupidly big house, as far away as he can put them.

It's all he can do.

After all, nothing they do is healthy. Luther and Diego and Allison like to think of themselves as superheroes, the way their Father wants them to believe. Klaus and Ben see themselves as monsters and Five isn't surprised by it, considering their respective abilities. It's a little closer than how the first three think, but it's not the truth. The raw honesty of it is this: they're experiments - child soldiers. Playthings for the man they call a Father. 

Just the knowledge of it makes him unbelievably enraged, even at the tender age of thirteen. He wants to run from this prison-like place, wants to leave, escape. His power thrums under his skin, sings of untold potential and praise and all the things he could do. If anyone had a chance at fleeing it's Five.

But he doesn't.

He looks at Klaus with his shaky hands and impeccably rolled joints, offering comfort the only way he knows how. Remembers Klaus burning paper in his room just to piss off their Father (just to gain a bit of light). Remembers the easy acceptance and the honest relief on his face when he saw Five in his stash and he realises he doesn't want to leave his siblings and so he can't leave this house. He can't leave the man who calls himself their Father and he won't, no matter how it makes the rage ache and twist like a maelstrom inside of him he won't leave.

He smokes with Klaus instead. Takes short breaths at first and hacks up a lung because he's never so much as had a cigarette. With instruction, he gets better. The weed helps, relaxes him. Five likes the effect it has on his mind, smoothing out the sharp edges just enough that he isn't cutting himself to pieces too. It doesn't dull his anger (or his powers, which is an interesting difference between himself and Klaus really-) but it does help him exist in the present moment, instead of always looking forward to the future.

Somewhere between his first drag and the joint being stubbed out, the universe cracks and the timeline ripples and changes. A woman with blond hair, working under the orders of a fish, will later check and recheck to try and find where the apocalypse went wrong. She won't find the answer.

Unknown to Number Five, this decision stops the apocalypse. The disaster scheduled to happen on April first, twenty-nineteen never comes to pass.

Plenty of other little disasters still happen between now and then.

* * *

After that first night, it becomes a _thing._ It's not _Klaus,_ sneaking up to the attic after dinner, before lunch, at four in the morning when his heart is racing out of his chest. He's not alone when he uncaps a bottle or breathes smoke out into the cold air; instead, it's Four and Five together. 

Klaus teaches Five how to roll a joint in exchange for Five promising to go and pick the drug up from one of the various dealers he has around the city. Five never knew there were so many of them. Part of him knows that these are bad men, selling things to kids that they shouldn't get their hands on. Part of him knows they're just people, trying to get by.

"It's so much easier for you! You don't have to climb down the stupid wall you can just-" Klaus waves his hands wildly as he talks and makes a _vroom-pop_ sound with his mouth (it is not what Five's teleporting sounds like but it gets the point across) "and you'll be there and back in like ten minutes! C'mon, c'mon Five, my favourite of all brothers, just go and pick us up a gram-"

Klaus has a talent for being annoying to the point of getting his way. Neither of them points out that Ben is Klaus's favourite brother and Five stands with a drawn-out sigh.

"Fine! God, you're such a moron-" He says without heat as he cracks his back, looking down at the courtyard from the highest point in the house. Then, with a pop he goes from attic to ground, startling the birds around him when he reappears. When he looks up, he can see Klaus, half hanging from the window, waving wildly at him. Really he should be scared Klaus is going to tumble to his death but instead he just feels fond.

Klaus hasn't fallen yet after all.

When he returns it is with the promised baggie and a box of doughnuts from Griddy's for good measure. He considered getting cookies, but the familiarity won out in the end. Klaus didn't ask for the treats, but Five had bought them anyway, knowing they'd both get peckish halfway through the night. Five uses such acts of kindness to remind himself that he loves and is loved, why he stays despite the anger.

Klaus is half crawled under the old armoire in the attic when Five pops back into existence, his face on the floor and skinny hips in the air. Klaus has always been long, gangly, tall but far too thin to support himself. He bends himself cat-like and then grunts and reappears with a half-full bottle of vodka. 

"Aha!" He exclaims, brandishing it like a weapon, "weed before beer, you're in the clear!"

"That's vodka, dumbass-"

"Shut up! Weed after liquor you'll never be sicker, it's the same difference Five, my friend! The point is-" He waves the bottle around again, spinning on his heel, "the point is we smoke before we drink! Now come here, little brother, watch a master at work!"

Five smacks him on the arm at being called little, and Klaus squawks like some strange animal before he plucks the baggie out of Five's pocket, seemingly having a sixth sense for drugs. _Maybe that's his secondary power_ , Five thinks with a wry smile, wondering just how pissed it would make their father. 

Klaus has never been a master at anything in his life, they both know this. In classes he never got the top place, his physical scores are all over the board but never first, and everyone knows his control over his powers is what one would call 'non-existent'. That being said, he certainly has a knack for rolling joints.

In time, Five will have that same dexterity over his fingers, a quick push and twist that's perfected through practise. For now, he just ducks his head to watch Klaus, eyes serious in a way that makes his brother laugh.

Klaus needs to laugh more often, and so Five is happy to put on his most solemn of looks as they sit nudged together in the attic. One of them burns like starlight, the other like ice.

They don't mention it.

* * *

When they're high, they talk about nothing and everything, skirting around the deep topics and speaking in tongues. None of them know how to be open with their emotions; somehow, they get close to them anyway before skittering away like frightened deer.

"Do you think about the stars?" Four asks him when the moon is new and the attic dark. 

"I think about supernovae." He replies and thinks of colours neither of them will ever see, realms beyond their imagination. Both of them are a fault in reality, within them something collapses, dies, explodes. 

They don't talk about it again.

Occasionally Ben will join them, he never takes a hit, but he sits in the corner and snorts when they get the munchies. He does join in with the stuffing of faces with illicit junk food, the type their Father would never allow in the house. Every aspect of their lives is painfully controlled, right down to the food they eat. Sugar is as much of a rebellion as alcohol and weed, and all of them (even saintly Number One) indulge whenever they have the chance. 

When Five and Klaus get existential, Ben likes to join in on their discussions with a quiet, morbid kind of humour that never fails to make Klaus scream-laugh like an idiot. Most of the time this ends in Five doing his best to smother Four with a pillow, so he doesn't wake the whole house up, all of them grinning. Five will admit, he doesn't understand the appeal of their dark jokes (not yet, he isn't one of them shrouded in death, his powers are effortless in a way, there's nothing abhorrent about them) but he likes seeing his siblings happy. So often all of them are surrounded by misery, it's like a cold mist foreshadowed by their Father, his presence looming and terrifying.

(None of them mentions the literal cold that Klaus gives off, it's not the same. It goes unspoken.)

More rarely, Diego will sit in and silently judge them for their habits as if Five hasn't caught him cracking raw eggs into his mouth like some fucked up snake when Mom isn't looking.

"It's protein!" Diego insists, his cheeks red, but he doesn't leave, and they don't make him. Sure he judges a little, watching them with narrowed eyes, but it's not like he's Luther or Allison, he certainly won't rat them out to Dad. Maybe if Mom hadn't been programmed to be entirely servile to Reginald (if she'd been a real person), he might have told her, but he doesn't. Still, he does force Klaus and Five to drink water between their shots until they get too far gone to try and sober up. He holds their hair back when they lean out of the window to vomit and tries his best to keep them quiet when he herds them back down to their bedrooms before the sun can rise. 

It doesn't mean the raw eggs aren't disgusting.

"You'd make a good Mom," Klaus tells him one day, face straight and voice solemn. It's early morning, and Diego is busy trying to hide the half-finished bottle of booze they've been drinking, trying to sober them up. Five doesn't mention that Diego is a boy, which usually excludes people from motherhood, mostly because Diego is already going a stunning shade of red. Partly too, because he remembers Klaus in their Mom's heels and has been wondering what that could mean since the accident happened - does Klaus want to be a girl? Five wouldn't judge if that was the case, but maybe Four just likes to be pretty.

And then there's the little bit of him that agrees with Klaus. Diego is the closest to their Mom, always following her around like a duckling, eager to be included. If Luther is their Dad's loyal son, then Diego is his perfect opposite, a Mama's boy through and through. This too shows in how despite his bitchy outer shell, he's got a gooey soft core. No matter how hardened he tries to make himself, Diego still cares.

"C'mon you gotta guh-get to bed," Diego tells them and Five is too tired, too drunk (too awash with love for his siblings) to argue with soft Diego and his sharp shell.

All of them are a bit like that, really. It's hard to tell sometimes, but they're all just soft, broken children inside. Sure, they all have their cruelties, the glass sharp edges that they'd been forced to shelter behind for their own survival. Some things make them cut worse than others - like Klaus when he's sober.

* * *

Klaus already hates sobriety. He's got a dependency on the alcohol that one could already call a full-blown addiction and a desperation for the weed. It shows in the way his hands tremble when he goes too long between drinks, the way his quick wit turns mean and snappy as he dries out. Most of the time, Klaus turns his cutting edges inwards and only lets himself bleed. When he's high or drunk, it's easy enough for him to turn his deprecation at himself. It's far more difficult without the haze that the warped end of a bottle provides, and that's when Klaus throws his anger out at all of them instead. 

He turns mean. A shattered mirror, somehow he reflects every insecurity you have right back at you. Five understands why it makes their siblings recoil, for fear of being cut. It’s not that Klaus is hateful, it’s just easier for him to be cruel when he’s hurting. Unfortunately, the result is the same:

none of them really know how to deal with Klaus, sober or high because there is shame whenever they look at him - at Klaus, at themselves. 

And now Five can see the danger right in front of him, the cliff that Klaus has already tumbled off. Five is hanging on that precipice, one foot outstretched to the universe, the other buried in the sand.

_To err is human, to forgive divine,_ he read once. 

Klaus is already labelled ‘ _addict’_ by their family, the word like a barb in their mouths. Their Father sneers it, all cold eyes down his nose. Luther copies the way his mouth slopes and eyebrows crease as he says it. It’s sharp and unforgiving and Klaus is sharp back in the way he calls Luther the worst of them all - _‘just like Dad’_. 

It’s a constant barrage of mistakes.

Are they human, Five wonders. They've lived practically their whole lives in their Father's prison, he is their leader, their teacher, their creator. He who accepts no faults in the soldiers he calls children, he who would not forgive. Klaus should be sharp but only where Reginald points him. He should be a carefully crafted weapon, not a broken glass.

And yet-

Five teeters. He knows he should be scared of breaking, but he isn't. He hasn't been scared in a long time.

(Anger bubbles beneath his skin, it boils and pops and washes away any hope of being scared. He wants to rip the world apart, take his powers and tear a hole through the whole goddamn universe. _Father, I am angry_ , he thinks, _you made me this way_.)

Five Hargreeves doesn't slip into addiction, so much as teleport into the vast yawning sea of it, diving in after his brother with all the poise of a baby seal. If he's breaking, it is a deliberate choice that he makes because there is no way to stay whole in the Hargreeves house.

His shattering is rebellion, its need, it's love. Most of all its fury, all the squeezed up pain and hate that roils inside of him, barely contained. _Forgive me or punish me_ , Five tells himself he could take it all now: the anger, the pain, his father's reactions wouldn't phase him.

Only, Klaus is the one who gets punished for it.

Of course, their Father omnipotent and all-knowing would find out how to cut them both in one fell swoop.

~~Loving his family has always been Five's biggest~~ fault.


	2. Chapter 2

Klaus broke his jaw when they were twelve. Five (and the rest of their siblings) remember it well; the silence that ruled their house for weeks. Odd and a bit oppressive. In the future, they'll make jokes about the relief they felt, but if asked to answer honestly, they'd all say the same thing: it had been an awful time. Meals spent with not even a smile as Klaus drank his food through a shiny, silver straw, lessons without interruption, no chance to breathe. None of them could admit that Klaus's continuous outbursts were looked forward to - they drew the attention to himself.

And of course the punishments.

None of them remember those weeks quite as well as Klaus. In fact they are probably the clearest memories of his life, those weeks - it all came down to the same thing really. The quiet.

He'd been given morphine for the first time, a small dose through a drip in his arm, most likely Mom's decision. Sir Reginald Hargreeves rarely approved of pain medication, not even Tylenol for headaches. 

' _ You must learn to work through your discomfort! _ ' he'd say, peering through his blasted monocle. Klaus had dreams sometimes of knocking the stupid thing off his face and grinding it beneath the sole of his shiny leather shoes. 

So, painkillers - they weren't usually a thing in the Hargreeves household. This was both lucky and unlucky for Klaus who found the morphine blocked out the ghosts in their entirety; it did a much better job than the alcohol he already drank on a regular basis and is undoubtedly what catapulted him on the road to continuous and lifelong addiction.

Silence. Blissful silence. The type he'd been craving since he'd been a baby, surrounded by screaming spectres of the dead that no one else could see. They were just  _ so loud _ and always demanding. They wanted salvation, revenge, respect and none of them asked nicely. Klaus didn't remember a time when he hadn't been subject to headaches and skull pounding migraines due to the sheer volume of voices, and then there was... nothing.

He'd thought, for the first few moments of wakefulness, eyes still shut, that he'd gone deaf entirely. Instead of filling him with horror, the thought had only made him want to smile. At twelve he'd already contemplated sticking something long and sharp in his ears if it would relieve him of the screaming. 

Then there'd been the steady beeping of the machinery around him, and Mom's soothing voice and Dad's much more grating one (ugh) and Klaus had realised he could still hear everything he could normally hear.

Everything but the ghosts.

It had been a revelation - ' _ Behold, I am making all things new!'  _ it cried, a promise of a brand new start in his young life. 

Klaus had played up his pain for two weeks longer than it had actually hurt, tapping Mom on the shoulder and pointing to his jaw with convincing fake tears. Allison wanted to be an actress already by that point, Klaus wondered if she'd like pointers, he'd already discovered plenty of tricks. 

Of course, his deceit could only stretch so far. When Father had realised, he'd been put straight back in the mausoleum for a day and a night, jaw still wired shut. It had been a hellish twenty-four ( _ four,  _ he'd thought to himself,  _ it followed him like a bad smell _ ) hours, stuck in the cold, unable to even scream but he'd comforted himself knowing there was an escape. A light at the end of the tunnel, so to speak, so long as he managed to round the corner.

There, with his face against the old stone, surrounded by ghosts who wanted nothing more than to rip him apart, Klaus had decided that he'd rather be dead than willingly sober for another minute of his life. 

It proved more difficult than he had intended to keep his promise. For one, painkillers were far more challenging to steal than alcohol, the infirmary deeper in the house and surrounded by cameras. Often one of his siblings was stuck in there, usually after some sort of injury in training. While most of the time, it was only for a night, it was still a pain. Klaus managed it twice before realising he needed a different approach to staying non-sober. He had then spent four weeks (he liked to do things in fours, he hated how the number followed him but found himself circling it anyway) debating on how best to get the drugs when an answer walked right up to him.

Literally. 

* * *

It wasn’t quite their first mission, the first time he’d gotten his hands on something illegal, but it was an early one. Even then, at twelve, he’d been seen as useless by his Father, and so he’d been left on lookout duty. It didn’t mean very much.

Klaus wasn't a very good lookout, but it was the best job for him. On missions, he had always been pretty much useless, with no control over his powers and little motivation to learn how to fight. He'd never been one for physical combat - why bother when Luther was stronger, Diego sharper, Five faster, Ben and Allison barely had to try, what with how their powers worked. Each of his siblings was better than him in some way, so why try to stand out?

It was no surprise that Father - Reginald - had been paying more attention to his useful children and not the one who continuously disappointed him. Maybe if he had been watching Klaus would have tried to impress him, or at least bothered to stay in place, to do his job. But really, why did they even need a lookout? Few people were gonna go barging into a bank when they knew the Umbrella Academy was already sequestered inside, fucking shit up.

(Killing people, Klaus thought. They were murderous little children, and most of their victims followed them home; they were always pleased to find out they could still be seen. God he hated fighting.)

With his siblings busy, the public spellbound, and his Father suitably distracted taking notes and making half-insulting comments it had been easy enough for Klaus to slip away from the front door where he could still faintly hear yelling and screaming. It was a horrid combination, mixed in with gunfire and a bitter chill on his tongue that Klaus had come to associate with the newly dead. Something like cold earth, rain, and rot, for days it would linger until Klaus found something suitably alcoholic to wash his mouth out with. 

The back alley of the building was quieter - not silent by any means, but quieter. None of the fresh ghosts had made their way out yet, and the few that were already lingering were the mopey type. Klaus had long since declared them his favourite because all they tended to do was float around and make depressing sighs and moans. It was better than the yelling and screaming of most ghosts, and at least they never tried to grab him. The grabby ones always made him painfully uncomfortable. 

Mopey he could deal with. They were relatable for one. Sometimes Klaus already felt like one of them, drifting through life, unseen and unheard. Cold, cold bones. 

It took him a moment to realise that there was a living person in the alley too. Klaus was loathe to admit it, but sometimes it was hard to tell. Most of the dead were ugly, distorted fuckers. The signs of their death stayed with them when they turned into disgusting spectres and the longer they lingered, the more warped they became but sometimes?

Sometimes death was quiet and unobtrusive, the ghost lingering with no obvious wounds, and then Klaus would mistake them for still living. He'd look at them and talk to them and for a moment - a minute - everything would be fine. Right up until they flickered through a wall (or on numerous occasions straight through him entirely) or started screaming for revenge. And once he acknowledged one ghost, more and more would clamour for his attention until he was practically drowning in selfish, needy spirits.

It made Klaus touchy and wary in equal measures, always watching to try and work out who was alive and who was dead.

Klaus was pretty sure this man was alive though, he'd never seen a ghost smoke after all. The man - teenager really, Klaus noted, not that he had much experience with teenagers - was blowing out some sort of acrid, herbal smoke that curled around the alley and made Klaus blink in curiosity. 

It wasn't a cigarette. Klaus had already gotten his hands, and mouth, on those. Usually from the fans that hung around the great hulking building that made up the Umbrella Academy and passed them through the iron gates when Klaus fluttered his eyelashes just right. He'd shared a few with Allison; in fact, but mostly he kept them for himself. He liked smoking, he'd decided, mostly because he thought it made him look cool and edgy which was something the Umbrella Academy was sorely missing - he could at least be good at being the bad boy of the bunch. 

They also gave him the tiniest head rushes if he chain-smoked a pack of them quicker than he'd eat his dinner. It never took the ghosts away, but it did make him want to scream back at them a little less when they were getting particularly loud. 

* * *

"What's that?" He'd asked, twelve years old and round-cheeked, bug-eyed behind the mask of his superhero costume. 

"It's just a smoke, kid." 

"No, it's not, I've got my own ciggies, that's obviously something else. I'm not an idiot. Or a kid." Not on him, of course. He doesn't carry his cigarettes on missions because they're likely to get squished and crumpled and at twelve it was a pain in the ass to replace them. It wasn't like he had easy access to money or to shops after all.

In front of him, the man had narrowed his eyes, looking Klaus up and down. Klaus raised an eyebrow back, tapping his shiny leather shoe against the ground. Their impromptu staring contest lasted all of a minute before the stranger had sighed and tapped his ash onto the ground.

"You seem like an interesting kid..." He starts and Klaus forces himself not to bristle - no matter what his brother's say he is not a hedgehog! And he is certainly not a pufferfish either, thank you very much, Vanya.

"The most interesting. And interested. In what you're smoking that is." He says half-serious, half flirtatious as he flutters his lashes the way Allison does in interviews and Diego does to fans. The man made a sound that might be a laugh, and he waved his hand airily - Klaus chased the movement with his eyes.

"It's a joint, ya know?" 

"A joint?" Klaus doesn’t know. He doesn't like sounding ignorant, but he has to admit he is. He stared at the smoke, curling up into the air, wondered what made it different. It certainly smelled different. 

"Weed. Grass. Mary-Jane. C'mon, you know what I mean, right? That's why you're asking, isn't it kid?" There was a glint in his eyes, a push that Klaus wanted to press back on. A challenge that he felt the urge to rise up to. Maybe it was the competitiveness he'd been raised in, that desire to always be better. 

Always be the best.

Not that Klaus ever got there. Most of the time he was in last place, his siblings ran away from him when they saw him or told him to fuck off when he got to be too much. He'd always been too much for them.

"Oh, yeah, I know what you mean-" He laughed and shook his head as if he'd just been playing dumb. "Can never be too careful, never know who you're talking to." 

If there was one thing he was good at, it was putting on masks. Pretending to be something - someone - he wasn't. Maybe it came with the dead that haunted him near constantly, maybe it was just the type of person Klaus was. It could have even been his upbringing, the father he was never good enough for, the siblings he always had to compete with. Being  _ just _ Klaus had never been enough for anyone.

_ Perhaps it's impossible to wear an identity without becoming what you pretend to be -  _ maybe he wasn't a full-blown addict yet, but it was what he pretended to be. What the universe always destined him to end up as.

So, he became someone he wasn't again. The childhood druggie, old enough to understand what he was asking for, young enough to get it for free. Soon enough, he would be labelled as  _ the addict _ , spoken of in hushed tones the way a Catholic might speak of the devil.

Check and mate. 

"Trade you what's in my flask for the rest of it." He said, pulling it out of his inside pocket. Slim and silver and made of metal it was easy to hide and far less likely to get damaged if he was tackled to the ground by some ill-meaning henchman.

"What's in it?" The man - teenager really, Klaus reminds himself, wonders what the difference in their ages really is but doesn't think to ask - narrows his eyes as he holds out his hand for the flask.

Klaus flashes him a bright,brilliant smile; one he's practised in front of the mirror, in front of Mom, in front of Reginald, until it's near perfect. Can't have a shaky, terrified looking child on the nine-o-clock news after all.

_ Say cheese! _ his mother tells him, and Klaus twists his face up into a mockery of a grin. As much as he loathes admitting it, the smile does come in handy.

"Whiskey, top-shelf. Courtesy of my dearest Father!" He laughs and tries to make it sound casual instead of manic. By the look in the stranger's eyes, he doesn't quite achieve it.

Thankfully, he takes the flask anyway.

"Yeah, sure. Why not? Get your own weed next time though, okay." He tells Klaus as he hands over what's left of the joint. It's now about as long as a regular cigarette, there's no filter at the end, the paper a thin brown.

In the interest of keeping up appearances, Klaus didn't comment on the look of it, different to any cigarette he'd ever tried. Instead, he'd taken one long drag - miming what he’d watched the stranger do - and prided himself on not choking on the acrid taste of the smoke. It was floral, fruity, a thousand things at once. Maybe he was just melodramatic, it had always been in his nature, according to his family.

Luther was strong, Diego had a stutter, Vanya was ordinary, and Klaus was dramatic.

He blew out smoke from between his lips and watched it dance in the air. Some people might have compared it to a spirit, loose and writhing but Klaus was surrounded by the dead constantly, and they tended to look far more gruesome than dancing smoke. 

One drag turned into another, and then another and-

* * *

It took him a moment to realise that the ghosts had faded. Slowly, and then all at once. Nothing quite as dramatic as the painkillers, just a slow vanishing until their ghastly forms were nought but shadows brushing up against the walls. 

"You got a way for me to do that?" Klaus asked and tried not to sound too excited, his voice felt too loud for his own ears. Possibly, it always was. The screams of the dead had haunted him as long as he could remember, leaving him half-deaf to reality as most people encountered it. 

Deaf, and yet hearing double the noise of the rest of the world. It was a horrible predicament. Now he felt like someone had simultaneously stuffed cotton wool in his ears while ripping out a pair of plugs he hadn't realised he was wearing. In an instant, his whole world rocked and tilted to the side. Maybe he was flying. Maybe he was just free for the very first time. 

"You not got a dealer?" Klaus laughed as he took another drag, the weed making the world spin when he shook his head, all colour and lowered inhibitions and a world without fear. This was the beginning of the beginning for Klaus Hargreeves. 

"Not a regular one yet. I'm between places." He lied easily.  _ Sorry not sorry at all Daddy, _ he'd giggled in his own head, elated. Spiteful. Years ago (at birth, at death, at a moment he'd never be able to pinpoint if asked) something in him had fractured.

Now he wasn't sure if he was being repaired or just splintering further. 

Really, what did it matter? Either way, it was clear nothing was going to be the same again. 

"Ah, I'll hook you up with Joannie, tell 'em Sam sent you." The boy - Sam, Klaus told himself - looked him up and down and smirked. 

There was something in that gaze that would become achingly familiar over the rest of his life, but Klaus didn't quite recognise it yet. What he recognised was the number scrawled across his arm in thick, black Sharpie, hidden by the long sleeve of his shirt and his uniform blazer. Above the umbrella, his Father had branded him with, it seemed to burn into his skin. 

Klaus still wasn't sure if he liked that feeling or not.

Still, that first step had been taken, a short fall off a tall cliff and all that.

* * *

_ 'you dangle on the leash _

_ of your own longing; _

_ your need grows teeth' _

There was something in him now. Maybe it had always been there. It bit against his insides, desperate for attention, hungry to be fed. Klaus first met Joannie, then Kyle, then Alta and after that a dozen names he never bothered memorising. Their faces all blurred together, all at once foreign to him and more familiar than his own siblings. 

Was he pulling away or being pushed closer? It was difficult to tell, the frantic thing inside of him was never sated.  _ More, more, more _ it cried, biting its fangs into Klaus. By the time the year was out and their thirteen birthday had been and gone, Klaus knew more dealers than most grown men and knew the words to say to charm them.

There was a despondency to his smiles, a dependence on the leashed freedom he'd found that kept him going back. Want was a beast that taught him to have quick fingers and a quicker tongue. He pawned off trinkets from his Father's house and pocketed the cash, less than half their worth but more than enough from a gram, an ounce, anything to keep the ghosts at bay. Klaus snuck out twice a week (sometimes more) to keep his stash topped up and found himself blasé, uncaring when Reginald got mad. 

_ See me, help me _ , he wanted to beg his siblings. Sometimes his desperate need is confused, forgets what it should be longing for. There's the spiral, and the drainpipe and Klaus doesn't really know what he's looking for, so he smokes more weed and ignores (tries to ignore) the looks he gets from his siblings.

He is thirteen, and everything is fine.

(It's a lie. No one ever asks.)


	3. Chapter 3

The past is bulletproof, nothing can touch Klaus there, but in the present Klaus is still a child, easily strongarmed by his Father. Five feels guilt, every moment he is away, being hurt in lieu of himself - Reginald has long since worked out that it is easier to hurt Five by hurting his siblings. Out of all of them, only Klaus never complains. Another similarity, that drive to protect those around them, the self sacrifice.

The self hatred.

It takes until Klaus is five hours out of the mausoleum for Five to finally find him. His eyes are haunted (Klaus is always haunted, has been since the day he was born with one foot in grave dirt and the other in life) and his hands are shaking. 

Twitching might be more accurate—an unsteady but familiar beat.  _ One, two, three, four _ and the rhythm starts over. Again, again, endlessly. Five can't remember when it started, maybe Klaus has always been like that. Maybe it had been the reason their Father had made him Four, or perhaps he had been named Four and then buried himself in the number. Five has a little knowledge about that.

Something like guilt twists in his stomach. Four was only locked up this time because of him. This he knows to be true. Their Father had practically spat the words at them both and Five had been waiting ever since. Hasn't seen Klaus in over a day. Their siblings would say this isn't unusual; Klaus is prone to sneaking out, running around, being places he has no business being. Five can't deny any of that. His brother is a whirlwind, chaos incarnate, flighty and prone to hiding. 

Their siblings - even the smarter ones like Ben and Vanya - still manage to miss something important though in their assumptions. Klaus is a disaster, prone to running away from his problems, sure.

He's also painfully lonely despite never truly being alone. Perhaps because of it. 

Which is what makes this Klaus-empty day so unusual - nowadays Klaus always brings Five along with him on his adventures. Or at least invites him. Even if he hadn't seen Klaus getting dragged away to the mausoleum, Five would find his disappearance odd.

He wonders if Reginald gripped tight enough to bruise - he can't tell, not with the long sleeves they are forced to wear near constantly. 

* * *

When Five finds him, Klaus is tearing through his bedroom for a baggie that's long since been binned under the orders of their Father. Not that he'd touch it personally, but Pogo has long since been written off as a pathetic and compliant coconspirator (at least in Five's own mind), and Mom has no other choice. Her programming won't allow her to go against the man who created her.

So, both their rooms have been cleared out. No weed, no booze, no cigarettes. Even the hole in Klaus's wall has been filled in. 

Five tells himself he's not angry, but he is - he's always angry. It festers like rot beneath his skin; he tries to kill it off, but it just doesn't work. There's always a sliver left. A spore he can't quite clean away. Every time he looks at his Father, at his Mother, at his siblings, it blooms and floods back through his veins. It grows and grows and never thinks to stop. Sometimes he wants nothing more than to burn the whole house down. Watch it go up in an inferno. All the things his Father loves more than him - more than any of them - turned to ash and smoke. Sometimes he thinks Klaus might do just that. 

Impulse versus control. Teeth versus tongue. It's always been the difference between them.

Klaus screams when he can't find the baggie, and he kicks the bed hard enough, it jolts an inch back into the wall. Five lets his nails dig into his palms. Point adequately demonstrated, he thinks.

"Are you going to set something on fire again?" His voice is tight, a little drawn out. Five is sat on the floor, low and unblinking like a snake but he imagines himself on a tightrope, balancing carefully in the air. Below him is Klaus, a safety net long since caught on fire. It's a bad metaphor.

Klaus has a habit for drawing on his walls, he writes down lyrics and snippets of prose, sometimes things he's heard, but mostly morbid poetry. He'd probably come up with a better metaphor, Five tells himself, Klaus has always had a talent for language. Five's own walls are littered with quantum physics equations that he scribbles when he's high. Most of the time they don't make sense in the morning, but when he's flying, he thinks himself the smartest man in the world.

Somehow it's okay that in the daylight they're just nonsense. He likes trying to decipher them anyway.

"No." Klaus sounds every bit of the surly teenager that he is. That they both should be. "I can't even find a fucking lighter." 

Mom would scold him for the colour of his language.

"Me either."

"Bastard! I fucking hate him." Klaus's voice is a hiss and Five is reminded of why he likes Four so much. They're both angry people, Klaus just manages to bury himself better.

No. That's not right. It's just that Four's anger gets lost under his exhaustion, spent on ghosts and a world that Five can't hope to be a part of, worn out by the fight he's continuously having with himself. Four turns away from his bed and the cabinet next to it and begins to tear through his wardrobe.

Klaus is impulsive and weighed down and a contradiction to himself. Five can't imagine existing like that.

"What are you even looking for?"

"Clothes, idiot. I'm not going out in this stupid uniform, I wanna look like a normal fucking person for once. Are you coming or-?"

"Of course, I'm coming." He says; w _ e're not normal people _ is left unsaid. Like a lightbulb or a body, it hangs between them regardless. They will never be normal people, not with a prison for a house and a jailer for their Father.

Five breaks the tension with a roll of his eyes. 

"As if I'd let you go alone, Four, you're a magnet for trouble." 

"I'm a magnet for fun and adventure you mean!" Klaus waves a hand back at him, nose still stuck in his closet.

They don't have many civilian clothes. A few subdued outfits that they're allowed to wear maybe once or twice a year to help convince the press that they are definitely happy and well-adjusted children. 

What bullshit. 

Somehow the media eats up the story that the clothing weaves. Whether they (and the public) truly believe it or not is a totally different matter, but Reginald Hargreeves is a rich, powerful, old, white man. He's got countless friends in high places, fingers in too many pies for anyone to try and stand up against him. They are undoubtedly sheltered kids in all the ways that matter, but Five knows enough about the way the world works to know people like his Father can (and do) get away with murder.

Along with ritually abusing his children-turned-soldiers.

Five knows enough to know the world is a joke. He trusts very few people - loves a few more - and understands he will grow into a cynical and jaded person.

A more cynical and jaded person.

Whatever.

The point is, their civilian clothes suck. Klaus complains about them every chance he gets. His brother has been sneaking fashion magazines with Allison even longer than he's been smoking and his style inspiration cycles between grunge, punk, and goth on a near-monthly basis. He laments the simple white t-shirt and blue jeans they were given. Each of them got a long-sleeved shirt in a different colour and a pair of matching trainers.

It's as much a uniform as anything else they wear. 

Which is why Five isn't surprised when Klaus practically insists he grabs the sharp fabric shears from Mom's sewing kit.

"C'moooon Five, please, I wanna go out and actually look good! I hate these fucking clothes-" He whines and Five thinks of the mausoleum he's only heard about in whispers. Remembers Klaus's shaky hands and looks to the deep bags under his eyes. 

He gets the scissors.

* * *

Klaus is pulling out a pair of tights (likely stolen from Allison) and the stub of an eyeliner pencil that was given to him by a fan. Klaus has taken to wearing eyeliner whenever he gets the chance, Reginald doesn't spend enough time looking at their faces to notice most of the time. Maybe he just doesn't care.

"Yes, thank you! Thank god!" Klaus practically squeals when he returns and claps his hands together.

"Quiet down, moron." Five tells him, but there's no venom in his voice. Not towards his brother.

In most things, Five is a practical person. He'd hesitate to say all - he doubts most practical people steal scissors and go out hunting for drugs with their wild-eyed sibling but, in most things, he considers himself practical. Clothes, especially, have never bothered him. If they are comfortable and warm, they'll do - or at least that's what he tells himself. For another version of himself this practicality keeps him alive through years of the Apocalypse, but this Five doesn’t know that. 

All he knows is that he’s not interested in fashion, in appealing to the masses, in showing himself off.

Klaus definitely is. 

Tongue poking out from between his lips he makes messy rips into the jeans and cuts the shirt until Five isn't sure it deserves such a moniker, what with how much midriff is on show. Klaus wears the tights under his jeans and rings his eyes in black; Five doesn't know if this is considered grunge or punk or any of those nebulous, shifting terms. 

It is, however, entirely Klaus. The look suits him and makes him appear uncomfortably older than their real age of thirteen. 

Five will never be sure if that's a good or a bad thing.

* * *

Jeremy, their favourite dealer of the week, takes one look at Klaus's jittery hands and the two bottles of whiskey Five had pilfered from their Father's bar and drags them along to a house party. They're not yet fourteen. Just children, seeking out attention wherever they can find it. Neither of them protests as they're led through streets they don't recognise to a house that may be big, but doesn't compare to their own.

(In another world, Klaus loses his virginity here to a man ten years older than him and doesn't remember it in the morning. He wakes up alone, and cold, and aching with nothing more than a bitter taste on his tongue that he'll forever swear is just alcohol. For the rest of his life, there will be sticky fingers on his skin when he least expects it and nights where he scrubs himself in the bath until his skin is raw.

He never tells anyone about it)

In this world, Five is with him, and it makes all the difference. For once, Klaus isn't lonely nor alone in the crowd, he has a brother by his side who has fire in his eyes and something deadly like steel inside of him.

It takes only three shots and half a joint for Klaus to loosen up enough to really let go. As the ghosts vanish, so too goes his self-control and every inhibition he's ever had - which is not many. For Five it takes an extra glass of wine, and the rest of the joint before the fire in him simmers down to a smolder. The feeling never quite leaves him, but it gets easier to ignore.

There is no Reginald here, nothing to hold him back but his brother and Klaus isn't the type to tell him to stop. So he talks, hands in fists but a wry smile on his face. Men, women, a variety of people and most of them with at least half a decade on him but very few of them cruel. Halfway through the night, he manages to lose the jacket he'd been wearing because it's hot and sweaty in the house, the air filled with smoke.

Five can't remember ever being in a crowd like this. It pushes at him like a wave, on the edge of being overwhelming. He's spent his whole life around the same nine faces, he can't remember ever being around so many people. Not unless he was saving (killing) them.

There's blood under his nails that he'll never be able to remove and the thought is enough to make him want another bottle of beer, another shot of vodka, anything to chase the memories away. He's never been bothered about life, death, all the messy things that come in between until suddenly he is and it's all he can think about.

_ What a joke.  _ He wonders if this is how Klaus feels all the time. No wonder he's circling the bottom of a bottle.

And then, like he's been summoned through thought alone, Klaus appears at his side, grabbing hold of his elbow and then his waist, as if undecided on how exactly to grasp him. 

"Five! Baby bro! Come with me-" He's yelling to be heard over the music, stumbling back and forth as the crowd weaves around him. A drunken haze has already filled his eyes, but he's got the same quickfire smirk on his face that's always gotten him in trouble.

"What now, moron?" Five mutters, letting Klaus pull him along before frowning and shoving him lightly. "And we're the same age!" 

"Not my fault you decided to stop growing, Five-o," Klaus cackles and shoves him to sit among a circle of strangers, people he's never met before.

"Least I'm not a stick bug like you." Five pushes Klaus's legs out from under him and groans when his brother takes the opportunity to fall - or rather flop - on top of him. Another burst of manic laughter leaves Klaus as he sprawls across his lap, all lanky limbs and sharp angles.

"Lighten up bitch-boy! Mikey here-" Like a snake - or a feral cat - Klaus writhes and sits up so he can make eyes at a man with limp black hair and spots along his chin, "has offered to share a little treat with us! It's our lucky day, Fiver! Wanna try some E?"

Five looks between Klaus and the aforementioned 'Mikey' with a squint. Truthfully, he doesn't know what E is, and he doubts Klaus could tell him if he asked, but that doesn't matter because he's drunk and high, Klaus is looking at him with a challenging grin. They might be friends now, but they were brothers first, which means they're competitive with just about everything. Maybe it's an unhealthy way to be, there's nothing they can do about it. It's just the way they were raised.

If Klaus is trying E, so is he.

Five rolls his shoulders, a long, slow move before shrugging.

"I won't say no." He aims for casual in his voice, the effect slightly broken by how it cracks on the third word - even for superpowered hero children puberty is still a bitch. Klaus squeals and practically elbows him in the side in his excitement, Five prides himself on only wincing a little.

The pill he's given is yellow, it has a smiley face on it. Klaus blows a kiss towards Mikey as he swallows his own tablet with little thought about it, this is nothing more than another window for Klaus to sprawl out from, feet never quite touching the ground.

"Go on, Five-" He hisses, not unkindly. 

* * *

Five never imagined himself going down the route of drugs. There was a time, between twelve and thirteen, where he'd been just as derisive of Klaus and his growing habits as the rest of his family. Now, he gets mad at the way his siblings weaponise the word  _ addict _ , but Five had let his own tongue become sharp with it too. In his mind, drugs were - are - an easy way out.

It doesn't mean he doesn't want them.

Five has always prided himself on being a child of logic, stable in an unsteady world—maths, equations, science. Logical behaviour. And yet, here he is, falling into the chaos that is drugs and parties and Klaus. Sometimes, he wonders how these two parts of himself can coincide.

_ Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes _ he thinks. Remembers. 

He is large, larger than his body. Bigger than his life. There is a wormhole inside of him that takes and gives and changes him, something the universe can't quite right.

Five swallows the pill.

It tastes strange on his tongue, almost chalky. In his mind, something soars, something cracks. He chases the sensation away with the rest of his lukewarm beer and then chases that down with a vodka cranberry concoction some girl in the circle makes. Somehow, he spills half of it down his white shirt. With the low light, with the shifting of his mind, it almost looks like blood.

Five laughs and then laughs again at the sound he makes. It is dim and smoky in the basement back room they've found themselves in, but the lights seem impossibly bright. There is a heat in his veins, so unlike the anger that usually fuels him. This is just warmth, hot and humid and uncontrollable, spreading like molten metal through his veins and weighing him down to the floor. 

Once, Five had believed he could fly. Before it became clear his power was teleporting, he'd find himself in the air and then on the ground, and he'd thought maybe he could fly. It had ended with him jumping out of the window and landing five feet away with a sprained ankle and taste of dirt on his tongue.

Now he feels like he couldn't stand if he tried. There is dirt and metal and heat in his veins. Does the earth feel like this, under its crust? Slow and easy and boiling over?

He laughs again. Maybe he is space. Maybe he is earth. 

_ Multitudes _ , he thinks,  _ and contradictions _ . 

Klaus leans into his side, and his weight is calming. Familiar in a world that suddenly feels adrift. It is Klaus, and so he chatters, voice slurred, about any topic that comes to mind. Something about music, and fashion, and strangely elephants - Five stops paying attention to him. 

He is large. He is as big and bright as a dying star, as huge as Jupiter and as sheer as the gas that makes up the giant. Every part of him is hazy. Above him, the dim lights flicker, Five thinks of the electric in his veins, the world spinning in place around him.

He is not yet fourteen, and for the first time, he thinks maybe the world could be beautiful.


	4. Chapter 4

It is no surprise that they don't make it home that night. Neither of them wanted to leave. The music, the lights, the free movement of their bodies had been exhilarating. Five had danced without his Father's stern gaze and the steady pattern of a waltz, and he'd been  _ alive. _ So yeah, they hadn't gone home.

Despite his hangover, Five wakes up early. It is a habit that has been trained into him over his life, and so he's practically the first one up - the rest, he thinks, didn't go to sleep at all. 

The sun is only just rising above the horizon, and the glorious high has faded. For the first time, in an absent-minded way, Five wonders what it would be like to kill himself. He doesn't let himself dwell on it. Instead, he shakes Klaus roughly until his brother wakes up and almost vomits on his shoes. Predictably, Klaus has lost his own footwear, and they have to search for thirty minutes to find them - one is hanging from the foyer chandelier.

Neither of them asks how it got there.

Five's head aches, a steady beat against his skull as they walk through the streets. In his pocket, a baggie of pills burns a hole against his thigh. He has yet to tell Klaus he stole them, frantic in his head but steady with his hands. Maybe he should have asked his brother to take them - Klaus was always better with thievery, his fingers light and sticky despite their shaking - but it's too late to look back.

There is chalk and ash on his tongue in the shape of a smiley face. Happy thoughts, happy drug.

He's sure Klaus won't mind, Five intends to share after all.

They take an hour to walk home. Somehow they get there before breakfast starts, enough time to spare to scrub their faces and change their clothes. It does nothing for the red rims around their eyes or the angles that Klaus's hair sticks up in, wild and untamed.

Their Father lectures them, threatens them, forces them into extra training. The trouble is worth the new high.

* * *

Their siblings - Ben, Diego, even mousy Vanya - are unimpressed. When they come down to dinner the next day, bright-eyed in an impossible way, they share frowns across the table. Silent communication has been a skill that all the Hargreeves children learnt to master early on when their Father made it clear he didn't tolerate the sound of voices at his table. They talk with their eyes instead, and occasionally their hands. Five doesn't want to see what they're saying about him today.

He looks at Klaus instead, his brother is swaying, tapping his fingers in a steady beat, mouth curled around a silent laugh. Five's own lips quirk up at that - it's been a long time since he's seen Klaus so happy, and they can be happy together. FiveandFour, FourandFive, a matched pair. They nudge at each other's legs under the table, they share something none of their siblings can hope to touch, and Five isn't just thinking about the drugs.

(Though the drugs are definitely the catalyst.)

He blinks, for a moment wonders if he's elsewhere, but it's just the high talking. Five enjoys the way the ceiling spins, all pretty lights that bolster the heat under his skin. In the air, there is a vibration that makes him want to move, jump, to turn his body into light and space - he is space itself, a wormhole collapsing in on itself. He deserves freedom. But from the head of the table, Reginald Hargreeves stares down his son (both sons), his face a stony mask. If he was anyone else, it might have been called a glare, but on Reginald, it is missing something. The look exists just to the left, inhuman and disappointed. 

It is a familiar look to them all, dead-eyed and cruel. Usually, it is enough to make even Five shrink back into his seat - though he buries himself in his hatred rather than despair. Most of his siblings aren't angry enough yet. 

Today, with  _ happy _ floating through his veins, Five just has the unexpected urge to stick his tongue out at the man who calls himself their Father. There go the final dregs of respect, farewell, he thinks unfondly, and good riddance. His hand curls tight around his fork, Five pushes his food across his plate and swallows the childish desire down.

He's never been prone to silly flights of fancy like that - he's not Klaus, never will be, no matter how close they get. Five wants to be the sensible one, the logical one, though he knows he's far past that point now. Still, he will always be more sensible than Klaus, he tries to tell himself. The reassurance means very little, there are times when a pigeon is more sensible than Klaus - and with a better sense of direction too.

It must be the drug, he thinks absently, finds himself curious about how it makes his head spin, how it turns everything to pure pleasure. Already, he knows that there is a price to pay for that feeling, that all-consuming melancholy, that depressive ache which had swallowed him whole that morning before he'd taken another dose. It had been an awful thing to wake up to like the world had been drained of all colour, but now he can barely remember it.

He's flying again.

* * *

Beside him, Klaus taps his foot against the floor in a steady  _ one-two-three-four.  _ Five has noticed his penchant for this pattern, he might have kept his number as his name, but Klaus has drowned himself in his figure, and he doesn't even realise he's underwater. The rhythm is steady, stable, Five nods his head along to it. Across him, Klaus even blinks in time with his beat, there is always a part of him in motion.

It always leaves their Father irate. Five wonders how mad Reginald is now, having two addict children running riot through his academy.  _ This is your fault, you made us this way _ . It's only mostly true.

Both of them have always been rebellious. They chafe at the constraints their Father sets, but Five thinks they would have resisted the world regardless, they are both so full of anger (and despair). Maybe it is the collapse inside of them, maybe it is just their nature. Five likes to try and pretend he has more control over himself, but sometimes he doesn't know if it's true.

What is bigger, the space of the universe or the weight of the unwilling dead?

(It takes another two years for Five to realise he is more in control than Klaus will ever be, despite their mutual dependence on something to get them through the day.)

* * *

They have already discovered that the comedown from Ecstasy is worse than a hangover. For all the drug gives, it takes in equal measures, leaves the world a dark and depressive place. Klaus is used to it, for him this just means staying high for as long as possible and ignoring how he wants to die when he inevitably sobers (he's been wanting to die since he was Four, four years old and first discovering what the dead were truly like). Five doesn't judge him, and Klaus is thankful for it. He knows Klaus has an addictive personality - when his brother gets a taste for something, he never looks back. Fire, alcohol, drugs, dangerous situations-

He's a junkie (they both are).

Five could fall into that mindset if he wanted to, but he takes a different route. Klaus is the type of person who wants and takes and consumes, not unlike the fire's he so adores starting. He is so desperate to be warm that he rarely enjoys anything. It doesn't stop him craving. Emotional, he is the Id to Five's Ego.

Which is to say, Five is analytical. His powers work on a physical level, he thinks in numbers and uses them to warp reality. Drugs are a dampener, they dull the anger he has inside of him, the deeply held rage that he doesn't know how to express. Five needs something to push that down because else it would tear him apart. However, they don't dull his curiosity, his desire to be the best at any given moment.

Before-

Before the start of everything, Five had been interested in physics and quantum mechanics, and most of all time travel. 

_ (Acorns, freezing water, his Father's cruel, calculated disappointment. Time travel.) _

For months he had drifted, unable to focus on a topic. Sure, he read literature with Ben, and talked musical theory with Vanya, and even tried baking with Diego and Mom once, but he had been untethered. The only thing that interested him was the drugs, and really it should have been obvious. Here is his new topic to hyperfixate on. All his bouncing, twisting energy jumps and he dives into the wormhole that is chemistry - with a bit of biology thrown in, just to spice things up.

There is a world of knowledge out there waiting for him. Five doesn't ask Reginald for help, and he doesn't ask Pogo either. In this pursuit, Grace is his greatest ally. She is not a person, programmed to act like one perhaps, but most importantly programmed to care and to protect.

"Mom, I wanna make sure we're as safe as possible." He tells her one night, sober and burning up with it. Five isn't so good at looking pleading, so he goes for serious instead.

"Of course, dear. You should always try to keep safe, Five." Grace is smiling. She is always smiling.

For a while, Five wonders if she understood his implicit request. There is a stretch of time between breakfast and bed where his anxiety bubbles up inside of him. Grace might be their Mom, but she is ultimately their Father's servant. Slave. A machine who can only act within her coding.

He needn't have worried.

Waiting for him on his desk is a stack of neatly organised books, each one thicker than the last. 

_ 'Stay safe, love Mom.' _ is written in the front of the first book, her handwriting small, her hand steady. Five feels something in him twist, he puts the book to the side and wonders if this is guilt or heartache. It is hard for him to tell.

Emotions are such finicky things. Five lies down on his bed and closes his eyes to think. 

Klaus chases the highs he's had a taste of indiscriminately, he'll take anything on offer so long as it promises to drown reality out. His entire life, Klaus has been running away from something. From ghosts and ghouls and things that go bump in the night. Five has never seen the dead; honestly, he can't quite understand why Klaus wants to rid himself of his powers so badly, but he can't bring himself to ask. Klaus, fourteen now and still afraid (always afraid) doesn't open up.

Does it matter anyway? Five knows he is terrified in the same way that Five is furious and bitter. He knows they both need their fixes.

Still, Five has a purpose now. He wants to understand the drugs, the highs. Wants to know why and how and what the chemicals will do to him when he gives them a chance. Through his research, he learns about a lot of drugs - legal and not - before he ever tries them. It is a sick fixation because unlike Klaus, Five knows the danger and dives into it, anyway. He wonders if this is what it feels like to flirt with death if this is how his brother feels on a daily basis. 

Something tells him it isn't. Once again, he doesn't ask.

It's fine, anyway. As long as he knows his limits he's not going to tumble over that edge.

* * *

Surprisingly (or maybe not) it is Vanya who he becomes close to in his endeavour to understand everything he can about illicit chemicals. They call to him like a swansong, urging him to collect any knowledge he can find. Five is greedy, impatient, and he knows he's hard to work with when he gets his teeth into the meat of things, but Vanya doesn't mind. 

Or if she does, she doesn’t show it.

Maybe she's just learnt to expect cruelty, to take it without fighting back. The thought makes something inside him hurt. Vanya has always been a quiet one, plain and ordinary compared to the rest of them, a girl out of place in their quick-fire family, but that's why Five likes her. Unlike the rest of them, she isn't prone to outbursts of temper; outbursts at all, come to think of it. Vanya is just... quiet. Smart and calm, and eager to be included, she wants to spend time with him - with anyone. 

Five was closer to her once. It feels so long ago, but it's only been a year. Something like that, anyway. He doesn't want to admit it but time seems to slip away from him, things he'd previously remembered becoming wet and loose as water, leaking out his ears. Before Five had drifted over to Klaus - to drugs - Vanya had been his closest confidant, and he feels bad for abandoning her to Ben. Abandoning Ben to her. She never says anything, but Five can read the longing in her eyes; he tells himself to do better.

(Truthfully, he only somewhat succeeds. But it's still another way in which he saves the world.)

"Methylenedioxymethamphetamine-" Vanya stumbles over the word a few times, reading aloud from his notes. She's on her stomach on the floor, a pen hanging loosely from her mouth. "Seems like an overcomplicated name." 

"Most people call it Ecstasy on the streets. Molly, if it's a powder. No-one is gonna go around asking for methylenedioxymethamphetamine." 

Vanya shakes her head at him, she traces a few lines with her fingers.

"I still don't get why you take it." She is all soft words, eyes looking up from under bangs that don't quite fit her round face. It's the style that Reginald had decided for her, Five wonders if she'll ever change it. Maybe.

Maybe not.

Vanya is a shy girl, prone to fits of anxiety, powerless in a house of superpowered siblings. She takes plain, white pills twice a day and carries the bottle around in her pocket - just in case. Once, Five had judged her for the regime she's been on since they were children, but now he knows better. Vanya is just lucky enough to have a prescription, her weakness is tolerated, medicated. Perhaps it is a tiny mercy, a way to make it easier for her to exist in the strict confines of the Umbrella Academy. It must be hard for her, Five thinks.

It's hard no matter who you are, growing up under Reginald Hargreeve's thumb.

"Why do you take your meds?" He asks her, a pointed look on his face. Vanya shifts, squirms, and shrugs. 

"They help...?"

"This helps us. Me and Klaus. We don't get pills like yours." It's a simple fact, Vanya's face screws up a little, the most emotion Five has seen her show all night before she nods. They're young then, no matter how grown-up Five thinks they are, they accept things without thinking. Vanya doesn't ask him about his habits again. Five doesn't ask about her pills.

They continue to study together, regardless. 

* * *

One night, some months after that day, Vanya goes up to the attic with them. It's a full moon, bright and dangerous, it looms in the sky and lights up the room through the window. Vanya knows there is something precious hanging in the air that night, mixed with the smell of weed.

Five shows her how to roll a joint, and Klaus shows her how to smoke it. Despite their detailed (and somewhat contradictory instructions), she coughs her lungs up on the first, second, and third drags. After that, she gives up. The drug makes her head spin, she feels fuzzy in the worst of ways. It takes only ten minutes for her to throw up out of the window, Five holding her hair away from her face.

"It's not for me." She tells them later that night, the room still hazy, all the lights flickering. 

Secretly, she promises herself to never touch weed again - or any of the other stuff her brothers put into their bodies. 

By the time she's eighteen, Vanya will regret her research with Five, resent the drugs she sees him and Klaus take on the daily, even as she pops her own pills like candy; there is a blindness to existing after all.

And yet, she won't regret the time she spent with Klaus, with Five. They're still her family, reaching out to her despite the great chasm between her and them, despite the wide, yawning sea that they're swimming in. Love is what motivates them to bridge that gap.

There is a world where those bridges are never built, but in this world, tenuous as they may be, they are there. Made of rope, terrifying to walk across, but built nonetheless.

It's why, even when she's an adult, Vanya trails after them, doing her best to pick up their broken pieces.

They'd do the same for her, after all.


	5. Chapter 5

There are nights when things are calm, and there are nights when everything goes wrong.

Klaus is sixteen when he tries cocaine for the first time. He has a lot of first times at sixteen (blowjobs, sex, skinny dipping in the winter) but cocaine is the most memorable. For once he's not at a club - Five has taken to sneaking them inside - or a house party. There are no friends of a friend, he's not even with his brother. In fact, there's no one around at all.

In his mind, the mausoleum looms, he can still feel the chill of it down his back. He hates that building, the end of the graveyard - where even dead things go to die. He hates the aftermath of it even more, when he’s not seen the sunlight for days, that’s when death settles like ice at the base of his spine, and then the feeling grows and grows and grows. Klaus is fresh out of hell; is this how prisoners of war feel when they’re freed? Like reality has become entirely untethered?

Now, finally home, he can barely feel the blood on his fingers from scratching as he begged to be let out, withdrawing in the worst way possible. He can’t see the light properly for the blue behind his eyelids. There’s only ice and the throbbing of his head through his eardrums.

Mom had been saying something about them - burst maybe. Klaus hadn't been able to hear her properly over the ringing and the echoes of screams. His own? The ghosts? Weren't they one and the same now?

Three days of torture, the never-ending spin of it. 

He thinks it was three days, at least. It could have been longer. Reginald doesn't bother telling him anymore, and Klaus can't find it in himself to ask. Since he got back, he's only seen Mom - the house seems strangely empty. Maybe they all left without him. Saw a chance for escape and ran far, far away to never look back. Klaus wouldn't blame them, he'd leave himself behind too.

Still, it stings to be abandoned. The toy that everyone had outgrown. No one keeps stacking blocks once they’ve gotten past toddlerhood.

Whatever. Let them have their fun.

* * *

The bathroom spins around him, and he sits on the toilet so he doesn't fall down. Sometime before the Mausoleum he'd gone to a house party with Five, a fun night. A typical night. He'd hooked up with some guy - Luke or Lucius or Lake, something that began with L - who'd been a fan of the Academy. There were a lot of those around, though less recently than there had been when they were twelve and thirteen. They're not quite as shiny and new now, Klaus supposes. Boring. Last year's models.

Whatever. It just means the fans they do have are devoted. Creepy sometimes, sure, but they know how to charm their way through by now. At least to Klaus, Five never fucks, barely even kisses if he has to.

Repressed prude man. Like a grandfather.

It doesn't matter. The important thing that night was the cocaine. Klaus had been given it in a little baggie as thanks for the fuck, like it had been a pity thing. Maybe it had been a pity fuck. It wasn't like Lilo-what's-his-name had been particularly handsome or anything, but he'd been there and offering up what Klaus really wanted - which was drugs.

It was always drugs.

He'd gone through the weed and the pills pretty quickly, sharing them with Five on the nights they spent together; the cocaine had sat in the bag for a week or so now. It was new and, even to Klaus, a little scary.

Scary was the wrong word. Intimidating. Unusual. More words, none of them quite fit. Really, Klaus had been saving the pretty white powder for a special occasion. Sitting on the toilet with blood on his face, he decided, fit the bill. 

It was cold in the bathroom, without the heat of a bath or shower. Reginald rarely put on the radiators - not unless the windows were literally frosting over. He was a sadistic bastard. Klaus had met a few of them already, but none like his father. With the door shut, the chill felt scarily like the mausoleum; he was locked in again, but this time of his own volition. 

The dead have yet to come back. Sometimes they take a while to find him again, especially if he's quiet, and he's drained. There is no-one around at all, just Klaus and the dark and the knowledge that he'll be wanted in training as soon as the sun rises. 

He runs himself a bath. If his siblings are around, the rattling of the pipes doesn't wake them, nor does the steam from the bathroom. They're either out or blissfully asleep. Honestly, they're probably asleep, but he can't blame them for not waking up. Nighttime noises are something every Hargreeves has grown used to, and rest is a precious commodity.

Klaus is tired. 

He's so fucking bone-deep exhausted he can barely see straight as he sinks into the blistering heat of the bath. Despite it, he still feels cold, _cold,_ **_cold_** **.**

Snorting things is second nature at sixteen. Molly usually, but sometimes crushed up Adderall or whatever had been brought to the party. With numb fingers and one of Luther's razors, he cuts a line. Multiple lines.

The razor is weighted. Luther had begun to shave straight recently, and sometimes Klaus imagines cutting his damn throat with the thing, and then guilt overwhelms him because Luther is his  _ brother,  _ his  _ family _ and he shouldn't fantasise about death, but it's always there. The death, the anger, the exhaustion that chokes him until he just can't breathe.

_ Why the fuck am I so cold _ , he asks himself. He doesn't have an answer. 

* * *

Five finds him twitching in the bath, water spilt over the tiled floor. The bag is empty, and so is Klaus and despite the rushing, pounding, throbbing of his blood he's still freezing.

He thinks he always will be.

* * *

"Don't you dare do that again." Five tells him in a harsh whisper when he wakes up. Had they not been in the infirmary, Klaus thinks his brother might have shouted, but they all know better than to use raised voices down here by now. Mom can be a very scary lady when she wants to be, even with a smile on her face.

Especially with a smile on her face.

Klaus feels small, sitting on the tiny bed, shivering through the throes of withdrawal. The IV in his arm is only offering saline as far as he can tell. Probably. Klaus isn't a doctor, and he isn't Five either with his newfound medical obsession - or whatever it is. He doesn't entirely understand and doesn't pretend to.

Doing the drugs suits him just fine.

"Sure lil' bro." He mutters and hates how scratchy his voice sounds. Five glares at him, and it is only then that it occurs to him that Five looks small too. Tiny and shaking and oh-

Sober.

"Won't happen again." This time there's a touch more sincerity to his promise, as if he might actually intend to keep it and he will - at least for a while. Klaus tries to be careful, but sometimes everything is just too much for him to deal with. None of his siblings understand.

Speaking of siblings, one by one, they trail into the room, all of them strangely subdued. Klaus waves at them from the bed and forces his face into a familiar, sunny smile. He's been practising it for a long time, now it's simply second nature.

"Klaus-" Luther starts, and Diego elbows him hard. It's hard to tell whether Luther was about to start shit or if Diego is just pissed at him like always and angling for a fight.

Usually, he can tell by looking at Allison, but now her face is screwed up in some sort of frown and oh-

She looks like she's about to cry.

Klaus hasn't seen Allison cry since the day their Father missed their seventh birthday. Even before then, she wasn't prone to huge shows of emotion. Seeing her on the edge of tears now makes something guilty squirm in his stomach. It wars with the cravings he's already having, and that only makes him feel worse.

Drugs left him in this situation in the first place, and yet he still needs them.

_ Addict, addict, addict Number Four _ , his mind screams at him. Thankfully, Diego once again breaks the tension.

"We were worried you'd d-die, die, Klaus! You fucking asshole, I was-" 

_ Scared _ . Diego was scared. He doesn't say it, but Klaus can see it on his face, in the puffiness of his eyes, in the stains trailing down the puffiness of his cheeks. Diego still looks like a child.

"Like I would go and die on you. Lighten up Gogo, look, I'm fine." 

"Don't joke about stuff like that, Four." Luther hisses, despite his attempts to lighten the mood. Klaus forces himself not to shrink back, he juts his chin out, stubborn as ever.

"Fucking hell Luther, use his name if you're going to lecture him. You sound like Dad." Five is somehow at the end of his bed. 

Is it bad he can't remember when Five got there?

* * *

"What's the problem with that? Dad is-"

"Don't even fucking start-"

"Luther, Diego! Stop it, do you want Mom to kick us out when-" Allison sounds mad now and strangled too. Like she's choking on something. Maybe it's those tears she'd been trying to hold back. 

His brother's shrink back, guilty. Five huffs from the end of the bed.

"Klaus... are you okay?" There's Vanya, quiet as always. 

"Right as rain, my dear, littlest sister! Nothing to worry that pretty little head of yours over!" 

Klaus leans forwards to try and poke her in the forehead and underestimates how much his body fucking hates him at the moment. Moving hurts. It feels like a truck has hit him, like his muscles are being pulled apart. It's like every electric shock and punch and kick he's ever been subject to have all come back to haunt him.

Hah! Haunt! 

He snorts at his own private joke, mostly to cover the groan of pain that threatens to escape him. 

Only Ben hasn't spoken. Ben, hiding at the back of the room, somewhat obscured by shadow. Ben, his closest sibling.

Ben, who understands what it's like to hate yourself for something you can't control.

Klaus is hunched over, an arm around his stomach (mirroring his brother, however unintentionally, he aches and they ache together) but somehow he still manages to catch Ben's eyes. For a moment, he thinks Ben might look away, but he doesn't. There's always been a quiet sort of steel in Ben. 

In front of him, Diego and Luther are bickering again, quieter this time, but still squabbling like children. They are children. Klaus isn't sure if he counts anymore. He can hear Allison trying to break up the argument, Vanya and Five murmuring to each other but all he can think about is Ben's eyes on him.

"Did you... were you trying to kill yourself?" 

Blunt. Ben was always quiet and steel and blunt as a rock.

The room goes painfully quiet—the silence echoes, like the ghostly reverberation of a drum. Blood rushes to Klaus's ears, and there is a second there where it is all he can hear.

Five looks at him. Diego looks at Ben. Klaus can't keep track of the rest of the eyes.

"Of course not! Look, I just got, hmm overzealous. New drug, new me and all! I wasn't trying to die, idiots." Lying has become second nature to Klaus. Most of the time his siblings think he's bad at it and Klaus is happy to let them. Easier to get away with the big ones that way.

He tells them, all of them, that it definitely wasn't a suicide attempt. He brushes away their concern and rolls his eyes at their comfort because he can't afford to let anyone too close right now. Not while he's still so fragile. Not while he's still lying.

It's almost the truth. God, Klaus wishes it was the truth but-

Well. He'd just wanted to rest. 

* * *

Somehow Klaus doesn't think they'd accept that all he wanted was some peace and quiet. Even Ben, who understands what it's like to be burdened with a power that hates you, doesn't understand the constant, overwhelming noise. Truthfully, Klaus can't remember a time when it hadn't woken him up at least once in the night.

He tries to tell Reginald this too when he arrives. It's later then, the dark beginning to close in around them.

"Your substance dependence isn't only a pathetic weakness, Number Four, but now it is affecting your team. You and Number Five will not be allowed such vices any longer-" Their Father insists. Klaus can't really tell if he's angry, disappointed, or just bored. He doesn't care too much either, after sixteen years it's easy to block dear old Reggie out.

If he weren't still exhausted from the comedown, he would even try and sneak Five an eye-roll; instead, he just sits there and nods along until Reginald wears himself out.

People - mostly his siblings - think Klaus likes the sound of his own voice but Klaus has never met someone who drones on as much as Reginald. It wouldn't surprise him to find out that their Father was a full-blown narcissist in the classical sense of the word, only instead of a pool of water, it would be a recording of his own lectures he'd be unable to ignore.

It takes everything in him not to snort in Reginald's face. 

Five looks even more bored than usual on the next bed, his chin jutting out in the slightest hint of a pout. Klaus has to wonder how many murder plots he's come up with by now - his eye hadn't started twitching yet, so it was probably less than twenty but-

Anyway. 

Neither of them bothered to tell Reginald that his sweet little sobriety scheme wouldn't stick, no matter how much he lectured and shouted. There was no real point - he already knew, after all. This wasn't a lesson, and it certainly wasn't care and concern for his dear addled charges.

It was merely a punishment, and all three of them knew it.

* * *

"Klaus, promise me you won't do that again." Five murmurs once they're alone again and Klaus rolls his eyes at the echo.

"What, cocaine?" He says, and he's only petulant because it's expected of him by now. 

And he's sobering up quicker than he'd like. By now, the drug and the near-death experience have all but worn off, and Klaus is seeing flashes of the dead out of the corners of his eyes. Like grotesque shadows from a candle flickering in the dark - only he's the candle. He's the light and the obstacle and they all clamour for his attention. The thought of being seen makes him shudder.

Yeah, he's definitely doing cocaine again. He's already decided that - the bliss before the fall had been worth it in his mind.

Sue him, he's never been one for looking at the consequences.

"No, overdosing in the bath you idiot. I already know you're going to do cocaine again." Five snorts and rolls his eyes, but there's an edge of something Klaus struggles to identify in his voice. "You shouldn't be doing drugs in the bath anyway. Next time get me-"

Klaus leans over, out of his bed, and taps his hand to interrupt the rant that Five is about to go on.

"Sure bro. Sorry, I left you out, shoulda known you wanted in on the sin." He says.

Five doesn't correct him. Doesn't say ' _ you almost died and I can't handle that you dumbass' _ , doesn't say ' _ I'm trying to protect you' _ , doesn't say  _ 'I love you, and I won't let you kill yourself _ ' and Klaus is thankful for it.

They're both still too young, too afraid to say what they really mean.

Despite it all, they're still under the thumb of one Reginald Hargreeves, and they can't find the words, the familiarity. Somehow, they still don't know how to be a family. The kindness is still there though, underpinning everything and for the moment it's enough.

"Eat shit, Klaus." Five tells him after a few long seconds, breaking the silence. 

"Shit yourself,  _ bro _ ." He says, knowing how much Five hates (loves) the informality of the nickname, eager to watch his face screw up in torment.

Maybe they don't know how to be a family, or maybe all families are just fucked up.

_ We have never seen a man or woman not slightly deranged by either anxiety or grief. We have never seen a totally sane human being. _

* * *

Diego and Vanya find him after his second overdose, Five again at the third. Klaus keeps himself out of the bath, out of anywhere dangerous. None of them are ever as bad as the first, not until Ben dies-

And then Ben dies.

They're seventeen.


	6. Chapter 6

In this universe, Klaus isn't the only one to come to the funeral higher than a kite. Higher than a plane. Higher than the moon, oh so big and round in the sky, invisible in the daylight. Klaus is high and flying, and he's not the only one, but he's still alone.

He can feel his power twisting like a monster in his stomach, and he thinks _Ben, Ben,_ and misses him desperately. It's like a limb has been removed from him.

It feels like losing a sibling.

It _is_ losing a sibling.

The feeling is unimaginable, it swells like the tides, it overwhelms him, takes the breath from his lungs and leaves him spilling over and empty all at once. Klaus couldn't describe it if he tried. While Five had been - still was - the brother he was closest to (for obvious reasons) it was Ben who he related to the most. 

Had related to the most.

Had been seen by, and understood by. _Ben_ , he thinks, and the grief howls inside him, echoing the loss.

They had been one and the same. Both scared of their abilities, both terrified of themselves and the doorways that they had been born as. Two melancholy peas in a pod, their fear the one thing that Reginald Hargreeves could never understand and therefore never control.

Ben knew what it was to have powers that hurt.

* * *

Klaus went to Five when he was craving, but he went to Ben after nightmares, shared stories with him, snuck down to the kitchen to get ice cream and hot chocolate in the middle of the night - one of them running too hot and the other too cold. They knew each other intimately, familiar and familial.

Doorways, the both of them, cracked a little too wide.

Klaus misses him in a way that hurts. Ben isn't there for him to turn to anymore. He can't soothe the ache inside of Klaus with his soft words and shared secrets. Fear burns like acid in his veins. He thinks of Ben's face and worries about losing the details of it. The colour of his eyes.

Inside him everything stirs, it spins around and around. Klaus wonders if this is what Ben felt like, constantly pulled apart from the stomach out. It must be right then for Klaus to feel this way now he's gone, carrying the burden.

The funeral is quiet, accusatory. Reginald looks at all of them with disappointment and Klaus is high enough that even the snow looks beautiful. Cold and biting like glass. Ben is not with him, and so Klaus settles for the next best thing.

Heroin, he decides, is a delightful drug. The rush is warm and lazy and slow. Klaus rocks on his heels as his Father speaks, as they lower Ben into the ground. There's not a body in the coffin. Just darkness and empty space. Not much of a body left at all. Bile trickles up his throat at the thought and Klaus rocks and rocks and imagines that the warmth inside him is Ben's arms around him only-

Only he'll never get that again.

Again, his elbow itches - he'd never used a needle on himself before, but they'd all had training in how to do it. How to find a vein and slide inside it. Of course, that was before Reginald realised he had two blossoming drug addicts in the midst of his super soldiers, but it's not like he can take the knowledge back.

And so, needles. Sharp, shiny, itching inside him.

God, why does grief feel like being eaten alive from both directions? Klaus can barely handle it. He feels a scream and swallows it if only so he doesn't draw the attention of his family - can't have that after all.

* * *

Five watches him from across the grave. For once they're not lined up in order, there's Allison and Luther curled around each other. Diego stands by Mom and Klaus can see his lower lip wobbling, the sharp jut of his jaw. Vanya is next to Five, the both of them looking dulled but together, and then there's him. Klaus. By himself.

Because Ben is gone and his absence is like a hole inside of them all but mostly inside of Klaus. Is it selfish to say that? He's not sure. All he knows is the pain and the floating away from it on a drug he's never tried before.

First time for everything, right? Special occasions with the Hargreeve's are never good. Just heartbreak and aching and the removal of something that should be there.

_Why not me? You could have taken me!_ Klaus wants to scream it at the sky, but he doesn't.

What difference would it make now? The deed’s already done.

Maybe Five knows what he's taken, his eyes narrowed and green as grass. He's on the other side of Klaus, Ben like a divide, one they haven't had in four ( _fucking four!_ ) years. Maybe he doesn't know. Klaus can usually read his siblings pretty well, but his whole world feels upturned. It's Ben and the loss of him and the heroin.

Dear god the heroin. He'd never done it before. Barely known where to get it but found it anyway, slipping out in the chaos of grief that had pulled and swelled before the funeral. He listens half-heartedly as the guy tells him how to cook it, declines the demonstration in order to get home in time. None of them even blink when Klaus locks himself in the bathroom - it's old news now, and they have bigger things on their minds. 

Ben would have noticed but-

Klaus knows he's addicted before he even takes the first hit. His veins open up like his heart has been opened up. The way his stomach is a yawning, bleeding wound. Klaus knows himself, knows that he's been an addict since the day he learnt what drugs were. Knows he'll always be like this.

Disgusting. Ben wanted him to be better, but Ben is gone.

Heroin does nothing to dull the pain; instead, it just puts it aside for a while. Puts it to the left of where Klaus exists, like it's been swallowed by a monster that lives beneath the surface of his stomach. For a second, he can find humour in the irony (is it even irony?), and it takes all his will power not to laugh at his own stupid joke. Klaus watches Five as his lips quirk up into a grin anyway.

Even Five looks disgusted at him. It's a gut punch that he can barely feel, bruised as he already is. Just another hit. He's upset, something that sounds suspiciously like Ben whispers and Klaus forces himself not to turn around. Not to look behind him. If Five is disgusted at his behaviour, he's just another hypocrite in a world full of them.

Klaus isn't the only one high.

* * *

No one asks him to use his powers. Hell, they seem to have forgotten about him entirely - that or they just don't want to talk to him. One by one, his siblings all leave - even Five, and he wants to cry at that, but he doesn't. Klaus has learnt that there's no use crying at ghosts or at people who don't really care about you. And then it's just him, sitting in a snow-covered gazebo by himself. 

No one asks him to use his powers.

Klaus does it anyway.

* * *

"Did I ever tell you that I'm not a boy?" Klaus asks the ghost-of-Ben one day, leaning against the wall of a bathtub that he won't have for much longer - not that he knows it yet. The tourniquet around his arm is tight, bright blue. It hurts in the best (worst) of ways. Klaus still hasn't told Five about his heroin use.

Or Ben.

He doesn't want to admit to either of them.

It's fine. Klaus is a screw-up, and he knows it. Ben is gone, and Five has barely spoken to him since the funeral. The longer he stays here, the worse he makes it for himself, and he's tired of seeing his family shoot him looks of pity or disgust. Klaus can't figure out which is worse. None of them understand. Even Five because Five isn't like him despite the ways they're the same - both addictive personalities forced into screwed up little brains.

"No?" Ben murmurs and Klaus nods, looking down at the needle he's holding. 

"Nope."

"Okay. Well, you're still a full-blown idiot." Ben's voice is a familiar, sarcastic drawl. One that Klaus loves and hates in equal measures, but he's glad that Ben is accepting. 

Accepting of his gender at least. Not that Klaus knows what his gender is but he's been thinking for a while now and he can say, definitively, that he's not a man.

It feels good to get it off his chest. Ben might be calling him an idiot, but it's certainly not because Klaus has got a tenuous connection with masculinity at the best of times. Being dead means Ben has plenty of time to hover around Klaus and do his best to mother hen - a difficult task when one is a ghost. Currently, he's glaring at the needle Klaus is holding like he might be able to make it spontaneously combust if he scowls hard enough. 

Klaus finds this behaviour endearing and fucking annoying, especially when he wants to do nothing more than shoot up. He waves his free hand at his ghostly brother and twists the needle between his fingers.

"I am trying to have a moment with you, and this is how you treat me?" In the last few months, his voice has cracked and deepened again, he sounds older, more like a man. Klaus hates it, keeps trying to retwist it back to the sound that he knew - the one he actually liked listening to.

There's something horrible about growing up. Klaus spent years running towards adulthood, but now he's on the cusp of it all he wants to do is go back to being thirteen again.

It's not fair.

Even less fair is Ben, who will always, eternally be seventeen.

"You're just trying to distract me from the fact that you're doing heroin, _again!"_ It's not entirely untrue. Ben doesn't like drugs, and he especially hates heroin. "You know I don't mind the whole gender thing. Since when have I ever been a dick about stuff like that?"

"There was the time you tried to slap Randy Martin when he kissed me in front of you."

"He was in his thirties, Klaus!"

"So? He gave me good cocaine." 

Ben throws his hands up into the air, and they go halfway through the tub. He looks frustrated, and Klaus has the strangest urge to scream at him to fuck off if he hates it so much.

Ben loves him more than he dislikes how Klaus does cocaine to offset the sleepiness of the heroin, and then more heroin to stop himself bouncing off the walls. Mixing his drugs is dangerous. It was one thing, Ben tells him when it was weed and Molly, but this could kill him, and it would kill him fast.

Pfft, what does Ben know? Ben is already dead.

Why shouldn't Klaus get to skirt around that line too?

* * *

"Anyway, I'm not just trying to distract you, Ben, I'm being serious. I'm not a boy. Not all of the time at least. Maybe sometimes?" Klaus pouts at Ben and rolls his eyes. In a rare show of brotherly shame, Ben actually looks mollified - if only for a moment. Then he gives him that same, soft look he gave whenever Klaus snuck into bed next to him and cried about nightmares and ghosts and monsters lurking in the corners of his room.

"Okay, okay, I'm sorry, Klaus. I didn't mean- Like I said, I'm not gonna be weird or anything. You're still Klaus, my bro-sibling? You're my sibling, and I love you." Ben stumbles a little awkwardly over his words and frowns, hopeful and nervous at Klaus. The effort is appreciated, Klaus would hug him if Ben was solid and alive.

But Ben is dead.

Ice floods his vein at the reminder, and Klaus wants (not for the first time) to burn the whole goddamn manor down. He wants to go on live TV and scream about all the fucking shit Reginald Hargreeves put them through, he wants to bring the Umbrella Academy to the ground but he can't.

"Aww, you do care about me!" Is what he says instead, all false cheer and confidence, the same way he convinces men to give him money for quick handjobs. The same way he swaps his hard-earned (pfft, hard) cash for the shiny pills and powders that keep his brain tick-tick-ticking along. 

Fake, in other words. Almost painfully so.

Ben doesn't like seeing Klaus turn into that version of himself and it's obvious by how his eyes turn steely and upset. His littlest brother (forever his littlest brother now) was never good at hiding his emotions - especially from Klaus. He would tell Ben to leave. To fuck off and find something better to do if he hates this side of Klaus so much but it's still close enough to Ben's death and the godawful funeral and the empty lack of his siblings that Klaus just waves his free hand at Ben instead.

"Of course I care about you, dumbass. That's why I'm telling you not to do heroin-"

"Shh, Benny, shh, you'll wake the children." He interrupts, inspecting his needle absently and Ben groans in annoyance. In the corners of his eyes, Klaus can already see shadowy figures beginning to form back into real existence. 

It's been a few days. Ever since he summoned Ben, they've been more active, and the house is always full of ghosts. Angry, vengeful things that follow his siblings around. People killed on missions - civilians they didn't save, enemies they put down.

Who thought it was a good idea to let a bunch of children become contract killers.

Klaus hates it.

* * *

"Shh-" He tells Ben - and the rest of the room - putting his finger up against his lip and tapping it.

"You're the only one who can hear me!"

"Tch, details Ben, details! Now shut up, I need to concentrate-" Klaus leans over and frowns in concentration as he tries to find the vein.

"What the fuck are you doing? Is that heroin?"

The sound of Five's tinny voice in the bathroom makes Klaus almost drop his needle and he groans.

"See, I told you you'd wake someone up!" He hisses to Ben. In the doorway, Five crosses his arms over his skinny little chest. His brother has barely grown an inch since they were thirteen; meanwhile, Klaus worries he's gonna have to start ducking to get through doors if he grows any taller. They're both lanky things though, neither of them ever managing to put on weight.

It's the drugs.

Ben sticks his tongue out, and Klaus mimics him with a huff.

"You could have warned me, you ass."

"Why would I do that? I don't want you to do heroin, Klaus." Ben looks unbelievably smug, leaning over (definitely not through) the bath to look at them both. Klaus does the mature thing and groans.

"I'd tell you to drop dead but-"

"Low blow."

"Stop being annoying then." He mutters, adjusting his grip on the needle so that he doesn't drop it. The tourniquet is maybe a little tight around his arm, the limb beginning to ache when Five slides to the ground next to him.

Beside them both, is a small, silver tray that Klaus had stolen from the infirmary in one daring escapade that involves two broken test tubes, and Five leans forwards to inspect it. Most people would probably be bug-eyed, but Five just squints and then looks up at him, ever so serious.

"I'm gonna give you the benefit of the doubt and say you're not hallucinating, which means Ben is here. You said his name."

"How long were you standing there, jeesh?" Klaus huffs and rolls his eyes, determined to avoid the question.

"Answer the question." Five doesn't let him.

Fine then. So much for avoiding the question.

"Technically you didn't ask a question." He says without looking at Five, and he can practically hear his teeth grinding together as Five clenches his jaw.

"He should see a dentist." Says Ben, Klaus ignores him because of all the things to say right now? Dental hygiene is what's on Ben's mind?

"Fine! Is Ben here?" 

"Nope! I'm just talking to myself for attention because that's all I ever want. Crazy attention-seeking Klaus! Now go away, Five-o." Klaus looks up and sticks his tongue out at Five. This turns out to be a bad idea because Five gives him one of those crazy intense stares that make Klaus want to squirm on the spot.

Then his eyes soften.

"Not gonna happen, Four... o." The last bit is tacked on awkwardly.

"If you're gonna judge me, you can fuck off-"

"Since when have I ever judged you, you colossal idiot!"

"Kinda judgy way to say that-" Ben interrupts, and Klaus has to snort in agreement.

"You just did!" He flings his hand out to point at Five and almost throws the needle across the room with the dramatic gesture. It is only the background knowledge of just how much money he'd paid for the heroin - and how he'd miss out on a glorious high - that stops him from letting go.

Five lets out another sigh. He's good at those.

"I'm not judging you for the drug... well maybe a little, but that's not the point." 

"Then what is exactly is the point, Five?" 

Five pinches the bridge of his nose tight enough to leave a red mark and then rubs his hands across his face. He looks tired, Klaus thinks. Good for him, they're all fucking tired. Klaus is running all the way into exhausted and Ben-

Ben is dead.

Do ghosts get tired?

* * *

"I'm judging you for not coming to get me so I can make sure you don't die! Don't fucking inject heroin by yourself at - goddammit, of course, it's four am-" His voice rises as he looks at the shiny silver watch that he'd bought (stolen) for himself a few months back, picked up at one of their various house parties.

Klaus is kinda impressed by the sheer volume he gets to. Really, it's a miracle that none of their other siblings have woken up. Then again, they're certainly used to Four and Five being loud in the middle of the night by now.

Definitely used to Klaus, whose screaming night terrors aren't always confined to his nice, soundproofed bedroom.

"What does that even mean? Why does the time matter? And anyway, I'm not alone dumbass-"

Five gives him a shark's grin.

"So Ben _is_ here!" 

"Yes, I am." Ben chimes in helpfully. Klaus gives up on ignoring him and turns around to glare.

"No, he's not." He says despite his actions.

"So you're alone?" Klaus isn't looking at Five, but he can picture the rise of his eyebrow - a smug look that always makes Klaus want to chuck him out the window.

Curse his noodle arms.

"So, you are alone?"

"Oh shut up with your logic, will you? Fine, he's here! Happy now? For your information, he's also being a judgy bitch-" Klaus turns away from glaring at Ben's ghost and makes a face as Five takes on the cat-in-the-cream look he always gets when he's right about something. The urge to throw him out of the window intensifies.

Honestly, the face is kind of funny when it's directed at Luther or Diego. Especially when it's directed at Allison because she and Five are both stubborn bitches who hate to be proved wrong.

"At least if you overdose you won't die now!" Ben's voice raises, and Klaus considers smacking his head against the icy tile floor of the bathroom. God he hates this bathroom and this stupid fucking house, everything ornate and painfully empty. He's getting itchy and cold, the way he always gets when he's too long between doses of... well anything. The mean streak that lives like a snake in his stomach and sneaks through his veins is threatening to uncurl and bite-

His head pounds a familiar rhythm of _one-two-three-four_ , all eggshells cracking against marble counters—hammers against gravestones against bones.

"Grow up, Ben." He mutters.

"I can't, I'm dead."

Klaus lets out an exasperated sound and tries to brain himself on the bathtub, letting his head fall back with a thud.

"Can I _please_ take my heroin?" He wants to yell but he's also wary about waking his other siblings up so he whisper-whines it to Five and Ben instead. Despite one being invisible to the other, they both have the same incredulous stares on their faces - as if he's just asked them if he can have chocolate ice cream for dinner. 

Weirdos.

* * *

Klaus just stares blankly at them until finally, Five sighs and leans forward again, inspecting the vein at the crook of Klaus's arm; his chosen inspection sight for the day.

"Are you using a clean needle?" He asks, looking at Klaus suspiciously as if he doesn't know the first rule in _"Being a Junkie For Dummies"_.

"Of course, I am. I read 'how to shoot heroin: 101." Klaus snorts, and he can see Five physically restraining from slapping him around the head.

"Idiot."

"Bitch."

"Fuck you. Fine. Do it." 

And so Klaus does, and it is freedom, and it is a jail cell, and it is sitting on the cold floor of a bathroom with his brother's next to him and-

And that's it. So many feelings all wrapped up in one neat, dirty parcel. Just enough to fill a needle.

* * *

_Heroin_ , he thinks, _what a drug_.


	7. Chapter 7

Time becomes strange in the days after. Klaus is high pretty much constantly but Five returns to his side. He returns to Five's side. Once again they become a complete unit, only now there's a guardian tentacle monster hovering over their shoulders and commenting on their bad life choices.

Not to mention Five's awful taste in romance novels. Klaus didn't even know he liked romance novels, but according to his little birdy, eldritch monster-brother-spy-thing, Five reads the trashiest of literature whenever he gets the chance. 

Klaus decides not to tell Five he knows. Good ammo has to be saved for precisely the right moment after all. One does not grow up in a house of seven children and not learn how and when to use your blackmail material most effectively.

Still, he laughs whenever Ben tells him about whatever Five is reading and feels that familiar pang of fondness through his own drug-induced haze.

* * *

It takes two weeks for Five to break and ask for a shot. Ever since that night in the bathroom, there's been an itch in his veins, an emptiness he didn't know he had. It's not jealousy, he insists (if only to himself) and he's not mad that Klaus got there first. Truthfully, Klaus always gets there first.

His brother is reckless. Sometimes intentionally so; Five can't deny that he's a little upset Klaus didn't trust him enough to tell him about his early morning heroin sessions. Didn't trust him enough to tell him about Ben.

Spite isn't what motivates him either. 

It's simply that Five is, like Klaus, an addict. He can be honest enough in his own head to admit it. That he's an addict and a thrill seeker and someone who's not once been satisfied in his life. Something in him has always been restless, it lusts for more than what he's been given.

The truth is, he's curious about the experience, the way this new drug feels.

* * *

Klaus watches him as he prepares his own needle, cooks the drug on the spoon he'd taken the time to disinfect. Despite Klaus having reassured him that he knew about needle safety, Five isn't sure whether to trust his word. Perhaps it's cruel, but Klaus has been known to lie.

So Five takes his time, narrates the process aloud as if he's just ingraining it in his own brain. Of course, that's a deception of his own. Five has known how to prepare for IV drug use since he started researching drugs but at least if he voices the steps he can assure himself Klaus has heard them.

How much he takes in is debatable. Klaus has that look in his eyes that's not really a look at all - the one that says he's far off in his own head. Five wonders if there's a term for that - surely there must be. He tells himself to look it up, but by the time he's sober again, the thought has vanished, carried away in the rush.

And it is a rush. An easy one at first, a buzz that settles between his ears. Five notes it with detachment at first, but he can only hold up for so long and then it takes him, like the last dredges of water going down the drain.

It spreads warm and slow out to the tips of his toes and Five knows he can learn to enjoy this high, chase it like everything else. He'll want it for the rest of his life because it's how his brain is wired now. Maybe it was always wired that way.

Klaus takes a sip of vodka next to him and Five watches the bottle, the condensation along the neck of it. The bathroom is warm tonight if only because Klaus had insisted on bathing not long ago. The window is open, and every so often, a breeze cuts through the haze of steam.

Five licks his lips and craves the taste of vodka on his tongue. He's never told Klaus that his biggest vice is simple, legal, and dangerous. Well, it would be legal if he was older. He doesn't need to say it out loud, Five suspects that Klaus already knows. It's just another thing that hangs silent between them both. Not really a secret but unspoken nonetheless. 

What a strange pair they are. 

The moments seem to string together into one blur that drags on and on. Both of them are quiet tonight - all three of them Five would guess, but he can't be certain Ben is there. Oh, he's sure Ben is still around in some form - as sure as he has two feet - but he doesn't like to assume he's always there.

Klaus certainly isn't talking to him.

"Remember the stars?" Five says after a moment. It seems like so long ago that he sat, talking about supernovae with Klaus. Another melancholy night that's tinged with trauma and a childhood they never had.

Five wonders when he became so...

Broken. 

The heroin seems to dull his anger better than anything he's tried. It's still there, nestled between his ribs where he should have a heart, but it's quiet for now. Sleeping. 

Five wonders if it dreams.

He laughs. Maybe he just thinks of laughing, it's hard to tell when Klaus doesn't react other than a long, slow blink. A normal blink, drawn out over the seconds. Five dreams of time often. The universe inside of him ticks forwards, and he considers all the choices he never took.

Fuck.

He doesn't know where this is all coming from.

"The stars, Klaus, do you remember them?" He asks again, more urgent this time. It feels important, he has to remember those times because the future-

The future is uncertain. One day he could wake up, and Ben could be dead.

Ben is dead.

Five's fingers twitch, and he swallows his awful feelings down. Tears are not something that Five Hargreeves easily accepts, he hasn't cried in front of another since he was nine years old, and Luther broke his wrist in a training session gone wrong.

He'd only cried then out of shock, having never had an injury so bad before. It had been a clean break, had healed well. Five barely remembered it happening, just the tears and then his hand hanging limp.

* * *

"Klaus-" he hisses, and he can't tell how much time has passed.

"God, what?" 

"Do you remember the stars?"

"Remember them? They've not gone anywhere- wait, they haven't have they?"

Klaus stands up and toddles over to the window. He leans out of it, too far like always and Five-

Five panics.

In an instant, he has blinked from one spot to the next, and he has a hand tangled in the back of Klaus's shirt, hauling him away from the window. Five is the smallest of his brothers, and if it weren't for Vanya, he'd be the smallest of all his siblings.

At that moment it doesn't matter. Klaus is out of the window one minute and on the floor behind him the next. Five swears and slams the window shut, the noise of it reverberates too loudly through the room and then there is an ungodly silence.

Drunk as he is, Klaus can only blink in confusion. Five stares back at him.

It's a weird amount of eye contact.

"What the fuck, Five?" Klaus shatters it, but only after over a minute has passed. 

Well, Five guesses it's a minute.

He's not actually tracking the time - it's not as if he can see the clock from here. Who even keeps a clock in the bathroom? Why is it ticking so loud? A constant, creeping noise. On and off again.

Five blinks along with it. Open, shut, open, shut-

* * *

"Five!" Klaus has somehow gone from sprawling to standing. Then there is a hand on his shoulder and another waving in front of Five's face.

"Anyone home? What the fuck was that?" Five wants to glare at him, but his vision has gone surprisingly fuzzy.

It's the drug. It has to be.

"Shut up idiot, you'll wake the whole house up-" He mutters and presses the flat of his palm against his eyes, but it's only because his head hurts not because he's crying.

He's not crying.

"Don't tell me to shut up, you just slammed the window shut loud enough to make the fucking room rattle." Klaus shakes his shoulder, and there the room goes again. 

"So?"

"So? So? So, I repeat, what the everlasting, goddamn fuck, Five?" Then the comforting, cold press of Klaus's hand is gone as he throws them out to the side dramatically - or at least Five assumes that's what he's doing. It's hard to tell with his hands pressed up against his eyes.

Inside him, those first warm feelings have turned to ice. All he can see in the inky black of his own mind is Klaus falling. Blood, a broken body against the ground, _Ben_.

Five forces himself to let his hands drop. His gaze follows them, and he realises they are shaking - a constant, minute tremor. 

In the back of his throat, there is a sound he doesn't dare let escape. 

God, what the fuck is wrong with him?

* * *

He looks up. Klaus is still stood there, uncharacteristically silent once again. Five wishes he would fill the air with some of his usual, nonsensical babble. A distraction is exactly what he wants right now, even if it's not what he needs.

Unfortunately, for every moment of intentional obliviousness, Klaus has his flashes of brilliant perception.

When their eyes meet, Five can see the understanding in his brother's familiar gaze. He wonders if Ben is here and hopes to all god that he isn't. Hopes that they're alone again, _FiveandKlaus, KlausandFive_.

He really doesn't want Ben witnessing his weakness, the shameful spread of it.

"I'm okay, Five-io. I mean you bruised my ass a bit, but that is nothing I'm not used to." Klaus's voice is soft, lyrical.

There is a note of kindness running through it.

"Gross. I don't wanna know about your sex life, you moron." Five grimaces and pulls away from the windowsill he'd slumped against at some point, barely noticing the hard press of it against his back.

"Just because you have no interest in the pleasures of the body-" Klaus starts, and Five raises an eyebrow.

"I never said that. I just don't need to hear about your nasty exploits." Truthfully, he's not had much interest in sex, but he's not just going to tell Klaus that.

Though, evidently, Klaus has already realised.

Maybe he should try getting laid. Maybe that's what would satisfy the itch that scrambles across his body, somewhere just below the skin.

"Rude!"

"You shouldn't assume things." 

"Whatever. I'll assume anything I want. I'll ass-you-me.... no that doesn't make sense-"

Five snorts at his brother's confused face, screwed up in concentration as he tries to-

Actually, Five isn't sure what he's trying to do. Really it's a crapshoot as to whether Klaus even knows what he's trying to do. 

"Whatever," his brother repeats, flapping one of his hands dramatically, "it doesn't matter. What matters is you." 

Klaus leans forward and uses his annoying, gangly limbs to poke Five in the chest. He hisses in displeasure and bares his teeth.

"There's nothing wrong with me."

"Never said there was-"

"Good!"

"-but your sudden defensiveness does say otherwise. Methinks the lady doth protest too much or whatever it was that old Billy Shakes said." 

"Who?"

"Shakespeare! That was Shakespeare, right?"

"I have no idea." Five lies.

"Ugh. Stop avoiding the issue. Why the big freakout all of a sudden, you know I've done that like... a thousand times at least? I'm not gonna die-"

And then Klaus freezes. He looks off to the side, and his lips move as if he's about to say something, but no sound comes out. Before Five can say anything, Klaus is back to him.

It's scary, how fast Klaus can shift gears sometimes.

Mostly because it's Klaus, and even Five gets tricked by his easy-going, fools demeanour at times. Forgets that Klaus is just as trained as him, and just as smart. He just hides it away for whatever reason, and Five forgets to question that mask.

"I'm not going to die, Five," Klaus says again, gentler this time.

Five wants to smack him around the head.

Actually, it's more than a want.

He blinks forwards and does just that, a quick, sharp slap that's certainly no worse than he's done in training.

"Hey! Bitch! What the shit was that for?"

"Don't be an idiot."

"I'm not an idiot!"

"You can't promise not to die, you moron! You can't stop death." 

* * *

(Unbeknownst to either of the children, the Universe has to snort at this. Her sibling, better known as God mutters something that would be best translated in the human language of English as _'I wish'_ because Number Five is wrong, but he doesn't know it yet.

Number Five will only ever lose one brother, and Klaus Hargreeves cannot die.)

* * *

"Well-"

"So don't make promises you can't keep."

"Fine, fine! Okay, fine. Geez, chill. How about... I will try my best not to die on your watch? Okay?"

Five relaxes his fists, having unintentionally curled them up as if readying for a fight. Considering their upbringing, it's not an unusual reaction. He thinks of Ben, the mess of his body, how he'd been alone in those final minutes.

Slowly, he nods.

"Okay."

"Okay," Klaus repeats and then frowns at Five. "You wanna shake on it or something?"

Five has shaken hands with a limited number of people in his life, but according to the media, he has been allowed to consume it is a respectable and mature thing to do. He looks around the bathroom, with it's used needles and bottles of vodka.

He nods again at Klaus and sticks his hand out stiffly.

"Sike!" Klaus yells and spits on his own hand. Before Five has a chance to jerk away, Klaus is clasping his hand, tight, cold, and clammy with saliva.

"You're so fucking gross." Five whines and pulls away the moment he has a chance, kicking at Klaus's bony, exposed shins.

"Yeah! But you love me, bro."

"Definitely not."

But he does. Five loves all his family, loves them more than he can put into words. It makes him angry, and it makes him scared, and sometimes he wishes he had no family at all because it would surely make his life a lot easier to bear.

Still, if anyone tries to take his siblings away from him, Five promises to destroy them.


	8. Chapter 8

Of course, Reginald finds out.

It takes him two weeks, and honestly, Five thinks it only took that long because their Father doesn't really care anymore. Doesn’t watch them like a hawk now that they’re older and bolder and less likely to follow his rules.

Or maybe he just didn't care about the two of them: his useless children - his disappointments. 

Five hadn't always been a disappointment, at one point he'd been Reginald's second favourite. Smart, eager to excel at his powers, and talented with them too. And there had been a time where he'd wanted to please Reginald too.

Now, he could barely remember that feeling.

He wondered if that even hurt their Father, or if he was really as unfeeling as he acted. 

Maybe unfeeling is the wrong word - Reginald might feel plenty, but his feelings just veer towards cruelty. He wants good soldiers, not happy children - unfortunately for him, he gets neither now. 

Even Luther looks uncomfortable at the mention of missions recently, all of them end up looking towards the empty spot where Ben had been - all of them but Klaus.

Klaus looks straight ahead and somehow nowhere at all. Five tries to trace his gaze, imagine where the ghost of his brother might be standing, but it's of no use. Wherever Klaus is staring, it is somewhere beyond his comprehension.

Reginald doesn't care about any of that, of course. He doesn't care that one of his soldiers was killed in action, only that the rest of them fall back in line. 

Which means punishment.

Sobriety.

* * *

Reginald has sobered them up multiple times over the past few years. So far, none of them have managed to stick. Five doubts that this one will either.

What Reginald fails to realise is that neither of them is doing this for fun - no matter what Klaus says. There's something in them that needs dulling, quieting, put away, and they'll turn to anything that will do just that.

Five never speaks about the beast that aches to get out of him. Three weeks of sobriety leave him sweating and shaking and not just because of the withdrawals. That age-old anger has begun to bubble up, it makes him hot and fierce and desperate for a drink, the way a drowning man wants air.

Maybe he just needs to be held under the water until the lights go out.

Fuck, Five thinks, he feels dull without the buzz now. He misses that buzz, the way the whole world comes alive.

Still, he's doing a little better than Klaus - his brother is still vomiting three weeks in and Five is beginning to wonder if he's caught a stomach bug alongside the withdrawals.

"Number Four, you must learn to control the upheaval of your stomach-" Five leans over his bed and does the snippiest impression of his father that he can.

Klaus almost chokes into his bucket, and he waves a hand around wildly - after a moment Five works out he's trying to swear.

"You have to actually put your finger up Klaus," a pinky goes in the air, "your middle finger, you idiot!"

"Ben says..." Klaus starts, takes a heaving breath, and then starts again. "Ben says you need to get more nasally."

"If I get more nasally, I'll be talking out of my nose."

Klaus snorts and slowly sits up. When he stretches, his back cracks dramatically, and he groans; Five isn't sure if it's in pleasure or pain. 

"God Four, what the fuck is wrong with your bones?"

"My skeleton is planning a revolt against my mortal flesh." His voice is low and sad, ever so serious as he looks over at Five. This, combined with the dark circles under his eyes and the ghostly pallor of his skin almost make Five feel sad for him until he actually registers Klaus's words properly. 

"What the fuck?"

Klaus snorts and rolls his eyes.

"Man, Five, you make the best confused faces. Like a little shocked puppy."

"I'm not a dog! And I'm not little." Sure, maybe he's the shortest of his brothers, but at least he's taller than Vanya now. 

He's going to curse the universe if he doesn't get another growth spurt soon.

"Hm, you're right, you're more like an angry little cat. Hiss." Klaus mimes a cat scratching with its claws - the effect would work better if he had any nails, but they've long since been bitten down to the bed. The nail-biting only starts when Klaus is sober and it’s the one habit Klaus has that Klaus actually hates.

God knows he's told Five enough times. Usually whenever he's showing off his new nail polish.

Personally, Five likes the glitter ones the best. It's sad seeing Klaus without colour on his hands though, and so he forces those thoughts away. Getting sad in the infirmary never ends well.

Instead, Five mimes strangling Klaus. In return, he gets a tongue out and a roll of his eyes.

"If anyone's a cat, it's you. And you're a feral one with mange." 

"Rude! I'd never get mange! I'll have you know I love a good bath." Klaus looks genuinely offended for a moment, his eyebrows go up into his hairline, and for a moment he looks more like a confused owl than anything.

"Sure, until someone's offering you a line of coke instead." 

"Five! How could you say that! You know I'd turn down a bath for a joint, a line of coke gets you three days of sweats." Klaus laughs and wriggles his hips - it's probably supposed to be suggestive.

Five screws his nose up in disgust and lets out a long sigh.

"Remind me why I'm friends with you?"

"Forced companionship throughout our entire childhoods and a shared drug habit no-one else supports." A finger is pointed at him and then waved in the air. It is a surprisingly adept observation and once again Five is reminded that even he continuously underestimates Klaus.

When he wants to be, his brother is scarily observant. Klaus excels at discovering people’s weaknesses and somewhere in the back of their minds, they all knew Reginald had intended him for interrogation. After all Four’s powers aren’t much use for anything else. 

Too bad Klaus has no intention of interrogating anyone any time soon.

* * *

"... why are you right about that?"

"I'm right about everything."

"I'm calling extreme bullshit on that." Five snorts and Klaus gives him an offended, wide-eyed look.

"Well, that's just rude."

"It's not rude, it's the truth. You once told me lava was edible." They'd been in a class with Pogo - though from what he's gathered through reading various illicitly smuggled novels, their classes don't line up with the American education system.

Who knows what was going through Reginald's mind when choosing what they were supposed to learn.

Superhero stuff probably. It feels like Reginald has been grooming them as child soldiers since the day they were born. Maybe it’s unlikely that he’d try and train a load of infants but Five can see it.

He can see it.

"I was six! And I was right, it is edible-"

"No, it's not!"

"It is edible once!" Klaus jabs his pointer finger forwards and gives Five a challenging look that has him pinching the skin between his brow.

"You are the biggest moron I have ever-" He's interrupted before he can finish speaking.

"You mean I'm the bestest brother you have ever had."

"No. Definitely not. That's not a word, and Ben is the best brother I have."

It's the wrong thing to say, Klaus visibly wilts at the mention of Ben. It's not immediately obvious, but it's there, a shadow that crosses his face, a heaviness in his eyes.

Five fights the urge to wince and instead turns to look at the clock. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Klaus bite on the edge of his nail, his thumb chewed red-raw.

Ten in the morning and they're still here. In the infirmary, in the dark, just-

Just what? Letting their Father rule their lives still?

Five is fucking sick of it. Sick of living in a house haunted by more than just ghosts. Sick of flinching every time he thinks Reginald might still be around. All of a sudden, the levity goes, up in flames.

All he can think about is his anger (and his exhaustion).

* * *

The infirmary is one of the lighter rooms in the house in the morning, it faces the sun and Mom makes sure to open the windows, but it's gloomy now. Dark with rain and the winter storms that promise to sweep the city off its feet. Five has watched many of them from the safety of this house, it's lofted ivory towers.

He's never weathered one himself. At seventeen, he's not even sure he could. The cold is something that he runs towards and away from in equal measures.

Cravings and fear. It seems to define his whole life.

"Hey... Klaus?" His voice feels oddly thick in his throat like he's hearing it for the first time. For the first time, he is realising there are bigger choices to be made.

There's a whole world outside these windows. Maybe it's a frosty one, hostile and unforgiving but surely it must be better than here? He's got his anger to keep him warm and if he dies...

_ Better to die fighting for freedom then be a prisoner all the days of your life, _ he'd heard once. On the radio maybe, or just in the streets.

He doesn't remember when, just the cadence of the words, the rhythm of them. They'd gotten stuck in the back of his brain, eating away like a caterpillar at a leaf.

And now the leaf is falling.

Where is it going to land?

* * *

"Yeah?" 

Klaus speaks around the thumb in the corner of his mouth, it muffles the one word that he says. 

"What if..."

Five stops. He takes a breath, and it fills his lungs and then his entire body, fuel to the flames. A fire needs oxygen, or else it will starve, he needs to burn or burn out-.

Five isn't sure which yet. 

The room is surprisingly quiet despite it all. 

"What if we left, Klaus? Just- what if we just stopped playing this stupid fucking game? Why are we still here? What's in it for us?" Once he starts the words won't stop, they tumble out of his mouth.

The leaf is falling down and down; from a tree or a bush. Not like an apple which lands on the earth and fertilises its parents.

Five won't be food for Reginald any longer.

"Hey, what-" Klaus swings his legs out of his bed, and Five turns to look at him.

"Let's leave. We can make it on our own! It's gotta be better than this shitstain of a building."

Klaus is blinking, his head tilted just this side of left.

"What about the others?"

It's a gut punch. It's nails down his back.

It's the only reason that Five hasn't already left. Klaus. Vanya. All of his siblings - even Luther who seems to worship the ground their Father walks on. There's an apple in him, one that's going to land and rot and take time to unravel.

If he's lucky, a passing bird will pick what's left up and take him far away.

It's not Luther's fault, it's how he's been made. 

Five wishes he could do more, show Luther what he's missing and what's been taken from him but-

Luther has already boxed him up next to Klaus. Sometimes, when Five tries to speak to him, it's like Luther isn't hearing a word he's saying. Just air and noise and drugs.

Sometimes he isn't even high, but that box has been thoroughly built now.

Five still loves him, but he has long since resigned himself to loving Luther from afar.

As for the others, it's not hard to see what's going to happen.

"If we leave, I think Diego won't be long after. Vanya and Allison already have plans. Luther is..."

He doesn't bother to explain. Klaus already knows how Luther is, perhaps even more than Five does. Even before the drugs, Klaus was Luther's least favourite.

Even Vanya ranked higher than him, or maybe she just didn't rank at all. Five has some issues with how his biggest brother treats his littlest sister like she's paper on the ground or just glass in a window. Easy to step on, easy to see through.

Easy to ignore.

* * *

"Yeah, yeah you're probably right." Serious to flippant in the blink of an eye, Klaus is standing up and waving his hand around airily. "Well, I've been saying we should smoke this joint for years."

"What? No, you haven't."

"Excuse you, I say that all the time!"

"In regards to actual joints, maybe, not... I don't even know what that metaphor is meant to achieve." 

Five is pretty sure Klaus does it on purpose sometimes - mixing his phrases in order to confuse him. The bastard.

"Ah, I have blown your mind. I see, I see." His brother nods as if he's suddenly dispensed sage advice, a serious look on his face. 

"You haven't blown my mind, you're just talking nonsense." Five can only sigh in frustration and shake his head. Surprisingly he feels lighter inside as if some sort of weight has been lifted.

That was probably Klaus's intention.

"Nonsense? Me? How dare you accuse me of nonsense."

"Don't be nonsensical then."

"This word now sounds fake."

"Moron." Five snorts and carefully stands up from his bed. His back already aches from lying down for too long, and he's sure Reginald deliberately chose the most uncomfortable mattresses he could find. It wouldn't surprise him.

He's an asshole.

"Anyway, I thought we were talking about leaving? C'mon then, chop-chop, let's go. No use hanging around." Klaus flips the subject again.

Five blinks and stares at him.

"I didn't mean right this second-" Suddenly, despite it being his suggestion, the idea of running away seems too close, too overwhelming. 

He looks outside the window again.

"Why not?" Klaus is already walking towards the infirmary door. Five is reminded of a match. Klaus has been lit, and now he has to burn through the idea before he loses it entirely.

"We need a plan, we can't just-"

"Five-alive, c'mon bro. Relax. We got it, we can do it. Stop worrying about plans, we'll figure it all out. We should pack though, I got a new coat, and I am not leaving it behind. Gotta look hot for the real boys out there. Maybe someone cute will pick me up-"

"Is sex really all you think about?"

Klaus is leaning against the doorframe, his eyebrow raised. There's no judgement on his face, but it's something close.

"No. I'm just saying if someone cute and rich picked me up, they might let us stay. Also, that coat is freaking warm and it’s the middle of winter." 

Once again, Klaus manages to make a succinct point in as a roundabout way as possible.

* * *

"Fine. Clothes, packing, whatever. Let's go." Five shoves past Klaus and out of the door, rocking on his heels as he waits for Klaus to follow. His brother sweeps an arm out, gesturing him forward and so he begins the short walk up to their bedrooms.

It's morning still, the house seems quiet and light. He wonders where his siblings are. 

In or out? Pogo has long since given up on trying to teach them lessons - only Luther consistently turns up. He knows everyone has their own things they do now - even shy little Vanya has started going down to the local theatre, asking about their music programs.

Of course, Five was the one to encourage her, but she deserves it—a place where she truly fits in.

A place where she can stand out. 

He still misses the sound of her violin. Most days, it was the only pleasant sound in the house.

The walk seems to go on and on.

Five wonders if Klaus feels the same, this longing, this mourning. He hates this house, but it's still his home - the place where he grew up. The building itself was never to blame for what happened inside of it. In a way, it’s as broken as they are, ever present for the sins within. It sheltered them all.

It holds his memories, both good and bad. 

The secret places they hid in, the spaces they were hit—every moment in between. Now that he's made his mind up to leave, he suddenly feels sad to see it go.

He forces himself not to look back.

* * *

"Do you... Are you gonna miss it?"

"What, this shithole? Not a goddamn bit. Do you know how haunted this place is?"

Klaus shivers and makes a face as he pushes past Five to his own room. 

"Our house is haunted?"

"Everywhere is haunted, brother mine."

"Yeah but you said-"

"I mean this place is  _ way _ haunted ya know but everywhere has ghosts. There's just a lot of shitty ones here."

"I didn't realise."

"You didn't ask."

"So-"

"Nope! Not talking about it."

"But you just said-"

"I know what I said, doesn't mean I want you to ask." There's a familiar tightness to Klaus's voice - he's lying, but Five doesn't know why and he knows better than to push.

If he pushes, Klaus will only shove back twice as hard. That learned stubbornness that has long since been ingrained in all of them, the hatred of being  _ known _ .

Five is once again reminded of why he hates his Father.

"Okay, you know what, fine. Just, go pack."

"Already on it." Klaus singsongs and winks as he ducks into his bedroom, the door slamming closed behind him. Five lets his eyes slip shut for a moment, and he leans back against the hallway wall, feels the paper of it against his back.

He can hear Klaus arguing faintly through the brick, Five wonders how much Ben saw.

Maybe if Ben was still here, he'd stay. Stay and grow up and become a well-rounded person. Find a lover and a job and all the things his books say you need as an adult. 

Maybe if he was a better person; but Five has never deluded himself into thinking he's a good person. He's an addict, he's angry... he's a killer.

A perfect one.

"One day... one day I'll see you dead, and I'll be proud of it." He promises the empty air, and he wonders if Reginald will hear it - whether his precious cameras will pick it up. Five allows himself a cruel smile as he pushes off the wall and into his bedroom.

One day, but not today.

Not today. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the slow updates but I promise they are still coming! I'm struggling to stay motivated but I'm determined to keep going with all of your support <3


	9. Chapter 9

It takes them four hours to pack properly. The first time Five checks, Klaus has packed little more than a few pairs of underwear and his jeans that are more rips than fabric. It wasn’t exactly a wardrobe made for the middle of a snowy winter, that much was obvious. 

"You're gonna freeze to death." Five had said bluntly and rolled his eyes.

"What? I have my coat-" 

"You can't survive a blizzard with one coat!"

"And what, your three chemistry textbooks are gonna help? What, are we gonna burn them? Use them as fuel to keep us warm out on the streets, huh?" 

"No!"

"Five, they're heavy! We gotta live light and fast-"

Five narrows his eyes at his brother and slowly draws one of the books from his bag. It is thick, an old hardback tome a good decade or two out of date, not that Five knows that. After all, it is the most recent book he’s found in his father’s library. He weighs it in his hand for a moment, looks down at the browning cover, tinted dark with age.

And then:

It flies surprisingly quickly across the room towards Klaus's head, and his brother squawks as he ducks, somehow managing to ignore the impromptu projectile. Five is disappointed that he didn’t manage to get a direct hit.

"Don't throw things at me bastard, I'm just being practical-"

"Ugh."

The annoying thing is that Klaus isn't wrong. Five is starting to get tired of saying that - well, of thinking it at least. Saying it out loud would only stroke Klaus’s ego.

Anyway, at least Five has more than one pair of socks in his bag - Klaus seems content with some fluffy blue boot socks and a single pair of fishnets. Five isn't sure when (or where) he even got the fishnets, and he can only imagine how little protection they give from the elements. He mentions this, simply to annoy his brother.

It doesn’t work. Annoying Klaus is difficult, always a chance it won’t work, or work too well.

"But Five, they make my legs look bodacious!" 

"I don't think you're using that word correctly." Five deadpans, perching himself on the edge of Klaus's bed. It creaks ominously, and he finds himself grimacing.

"I am using it entirely correctly, brother mine! You're just jealous that all the boys and girls want me and not your short ass."

"Fuck off Klaus, I could get laid if I wanted." 

"So why is it I never see you going off into a dark and steamy corner?"

"Does it matter? Just pack your bag already, will you?" He sighs, trying to redirect the subject. It's not like Klaus goes to dark corners with his partners most of the time anyway, Five knows his brother is claustrophobic and nyctophobic, but he's tired of seeing him gyrating with his stranger of the week.

He's not asking Klaus to fuck in a crypt, but surely a bedroom would be more comfortable than - well, literally anywhere else? It's hard to understand the appeal of fucking in a hallway.

Five usually goes outside whenever Klaus wanders off with a new conquest to avoid the urge to bleach his eyes.

"I'm packing! You're just sitting there with your lovely heavy books, acting as if I'll forget about them if you nag me hard enough."

"I'm not doing that!"

"You are! Ben says so." Klaus is holding up a pair of leather pants that have bright blue paint up the side, and Five can't figure out if the stains are intentional or not.

At least they're full-length pants.

"Don't use Ben against me." 

"I'm not using Ben against you! It's true!" Klaus rolls his eyes and shoves the leather pants into his bag without waiting for Five to reply properly. Thankfully he puts another pair of socks in alongside them so Five counts it as an overall win.

"... I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt because unfortunately, Ben is sensible." 

"Are you saying I'm not sensible?"

"You have about as much sense as a headless chicken, Klaus."

"Rude." 

A pair of socks - these one's standard Academy black - come flying at his head and Five is just lucky that Klaus didn't use his chemistry textbook, not splayed across the floor, its pages bent and crooked. The sight makes Five feel bad, but he doesn’t go to pick it up. No use reminding Klaus that it’s there, just waiting to be used as ammo. It would have been the usual revenge. Not that the socks manage to come anywhere near him because of all the skills Klaus had been blessed with, good aim was not one of them.

Everyone avoids throwing things at Diego.

Throwing things at Diego is a guaranteed whack in the stomach with something heavy that even Five struggles to dodge. Diego is slow when he’s not being impulsive, meticulous with his planning, and of course has perfect aim.

Thankfully he's also an idiot at times, so Five just has to convince him that it was one of their other siblings in order to get off scot-free. He won't admit that it took him until sixteen to figure that out - and entirely by accident too.

* * *

Five remembers the day clearly. It went like so:

It had been one of the rare dinners where Reginald wasn't around. Some sort of business trip they'd all assumed, though none of them had ever asked exactly what it was their Father did, or where he went when he wasn't around. He could have been on the moon for all they knew, or deep beneath the ocean, never sharing any information with his robot wife or his little soldier children. They didn’t mind.

Mostly, they were just glad he wasn't near. 

Even Luther was less tense when Reginald Hargreeves wasn't lingering in the air, his presence a fog thick and heavy enough to bring everyone down.

Dinner had been served in the basement kitchen, rather than the large dining room they usually ate in. It was another one of those places that Reginald Hargreeves rarely entered, though none of them knew why, and Five much preferred it as a place to eat. Despite being half underground and cool with it's exposed brick walls, it was far more friendly than the stately hall they'd grown up eating in.

Perhaps it just felt less tainted.

Five wasn't sure when the food fight started.

That was another thing he'd never admit, but he'd been high and drunk at the time and more concerned with managing to roll another joint than observing what his siblings were doing. Klaus had been beside him, almost passed out in his mash.

"Four, get up." He'd mumbled, his hands shaking a little.

"Ngh-shngh-gh." Klaus had replied.

Despite having extensive training in deciphering Klaus's babbles, even Five had had to admit defeat at that.

"What?"

"Not gonna go swimming." He'd said again, still slurring his words, when a round slice of carrot had smacked itself directly into his forehead with a wet splat. Covered in gravy, it had stuck there for a moment before sliding down Klaus's face and dropping into his mash.

Klaus had blinked. 

Once. Twice. Three times.

Five finally realised that in his distraction, all hell had erupted around him. He was pretty sure Luther had mash so far in his ear it was coming out of the other one - or he had mash in both ears? It was hard to tell.

Allison, being one with a brain cell, had already vanished, or at least made herself hidden enough not to be a target.

Five blinked again, the world spinning around him as if on a carousel. Things were already destructively chaotic and personally, he'd just been counting down the time until Klaus got involved properly - currently he was still in a shocked, gormless state.

Maybe the carrot had knocked his last brain cell out?

No. It was probably the bong that Klaus had been experimenting with for two hours before dinner.

Still, it was funny seeing him like this, Five could admit. He wanted to just... push Klaus over to see what might happen. After all, he was already veering out of his chair, hanging to the left like that monument in Pisa - the leaning tower?

Did that go left?

Five had never personally seen it, though he'd seen the Eiffel tower once, before it had launched into space.

Had they ever replaced that?

"Look out!"

Five groaned, the world upending itself with a thud and a crack as he was forced out of his chair and onto the floor.

"What-"

Klaus had obviously regained his senses, at least enough to move. Peas rained down onto his back, a few rolling down his open shirt and landing on Five.

He'd grimaced.

Gross.

"Ugh."

"I saved you!" Klaus had crowed as he sat up, clapping his hands together like a monkey - a regular monkey, not the enhanced chimpanzee they had for a butler.

"You knocked me to the floor!"

"I stopped the pea attack! The Peatack!" 

Five shoved Klaus off his lap and then winced at his hurt expression. Across the room, Diego and Luther were entangled in each other  _ again _ , this was an unfortunately common occurrence.

"Klaus, get up." Five had muttered, looking across the table at what had once been an impeccable spread, prepared by their ever-loving mother. He could already imagine what trouble they'd be in if anyone besides her found out.

Diego was suspiciously close to the peas. Five picked one out of his hair and flicked it across the room.

Allison had returned, ketchup down the front of her dress, and of all people, Ben was holding the bottle like some sort of weapon. There was the type of frantic gleam in his eye that Five had only seen in criminals backed into the corner.

Judging by the look on Allison's face, it wasn't an inaccurate description.

"You bastard, you got gravy on my shirt!"

"Two, stop putting mash in my ears I'll tell Pogo, get off-" Luther bucked like a donkey beneath Diego. Atop him, Diego veered wildly left and tangled a hand in Luther's hair to avoid toppling off his shoulders completely.

"Animal! You're such a child!" The squawking noise that came from Luther was barely human, a large hand reaching blindly towards the table and landing with a disgusting squelch in his plate.

"Five look at the action! Two goes for the ears, One picks up the ham and boom!"

Luther had indeed picked up two thick slices of ham from his dinner, and with a growl, he smacked it at Diego's face - or at least tried.

The thing is, Luther was (and had always been) a large child and he was growing into an even larger adult. This gave him an advantage in some areas, he was built and strong and could lift a building, stop a truck-

Speed and dexterity were not his strong suits, and Diego, who had been competing with him for the last sixteen years, knew that and used it to his advantage. All that extra training, the copious amounts of yoga and pilates hadn't been for nothing.

Luther's ham-hands came towards Diego's face. Diego's legs squeezed around Luther's shoulders, and his back went backwards, head towards the floor.

"Impressive core strength!" Klaus crowed.

The ham, slippery with gravy, flew from Luther's face. Five realised too late what direction it was coming in.

Namely, his direction.

"Oh no, you fucking don't-"

It was a split-second decision and in absolute honesty a stupid one.

Five Hargreeves had been blessed with the power of teleportation. In a fight, it was extremely useful for dodging. For avoidance. For getting away from something coming towards him.

He didn't use his powers. In fact, he barely even moved. Instead, as the ham came towards him, he stuck a hand up and batted it back away from his face.

The ham, thickly sliced, hit his hand with a wet sound.

Diego, flipped back up and lurched forwards over Luther's shoulder.

Five, seeing this happening in slow motion, took one step to the side and then another until he stood behind Klaus.

There was a long moment, a silence as everything seemed to stand still bar the ham flying through the air.

_ THWACK _ it sounded as it hit Diego in the face, a meaty, wet sound that made all of them grimace.

"Shit." Klaus squeaked and Five took the opportunity to vanish under the table before he got anymore involved than he already was.

"FOUR! I'm going to kill you!" Diego roared, loud enough that it seemed to shake the whole room, followed by a familiar shrill scream as Klaus presumably bolted.

Five turned his head and there, sat under the table with a plate full of food was Vanya, face the same curious blank that it ever was. 

"Ham?" She offered him, holding out her fork.

And Five had taken it.

Sometimes family dinners just went the wrong way.

* * *

"Yoohoo, Five! Hello, anyone in there?" Five was startled back to the current world when Klaus flicked him in the forehead with a surprising amount of force.

"Ow, fucker, don't do that." 

His brother dodged the outstretched kick of his leg with practised ease.

"You've been zoning out for like, five minutes bro."

"Shut up, I was thinking."

"Oh, so you have thoughts now? Look at the clever man."

"You're an ass, you know that?"

"I have been told," Klaus says primly, rolling his eyes as he shrugs on a lime green sweater that looks like it's seen better days. At least it's warm.

"Are you finished packing?"

"Are  _ you _ finished packing, Five-Alive?"

"Don't answer my question with the same question!"

Klaus mocks him, sticking his tongue out before spinning on his heels. 

"Yes, I'm done packing, Mr Not-Really-Responsible. Ben says, get rid of your books and wear boots, not trainers."

"Fine."

Briefly, Five considers rechecking Klaus's bag and then promptly decides that it would be far too much effort. Anyway, if they're going to survive alone on the streets, he can't baby Klaus through everything. His brother will learn or-

Or what? Five refuses to consider the alternative.

Klaus will learn. Five won't lose all his siblings.

He thinks of Diego, ham sliding down his face, and his heart clenches roughly in his chest, a physical ache that he just can't ignore. It's not fair he has to leave, but he can't consider staying. Every day the flame inside him grows.

If he doesn't go, he'll burn the whole world down, he's sure of it.

And, Five thinks as he looks at his brother, all shaky hands and hastily applied eyeliner, Klaus will light the match.

It doesn't mean there isn't a melancholy within him all of a sudden.

_ To move forward, you must leave the past behind _ .

* * *

Outside, it's cold. 

Five puts his hands in his pockets and tries not to think of how it's only going to get colder. Besides him, Klaus chatters, seemingly to thin air. It's only a small consolation that Ben is nearby, still with them.

Apparently not mad. 

Not that Five can ask him without asking Klaus and his brother isn't exactly known for being entirely honest at the best of times. Five would be calling the kettle black if he got annoyed at Klaus, but he does get annoyed. Everyone is hypocritical after all.

In any other life, he thinks the lying would have driven him away. Driven everyone away.

Prickly, cactus Klaus. Ice queen, all shards and mirrors.

Fuck if it isn't cold though. 

He knows they should find a place to sleep, a friend’s house or a homeless shelter - hell even an empty building. Maybe friend is too strong a word, but they've crashed with various people before. Five is sure Klaus could charm his way out of a paper bag if needed, especially when he wants to wheedle drugs like blood from a stone.

Instead, they walk in circles. Even at midday, with the sun at its highest point, Five can tell it's threatening to snow.

"Let's go left here," Klaus occasionally says - always left, leading them round and round.

Does he notice? Five doesn't know. He's cold and lost all of a sudden. Inside him is a new ache, a fear he's never felt before.

He wants to go home.

Home is gone. They could return, and no one would notice the difference, but Five would know the choice he made and failed to follow through on. The thought of giving up makes him feel sick.

And Reginald would know.

It's the only thing that keeps him moving.

He keeps his hands in his pockets to hide how they tremble. It's the cold, he tells himself.

Just the cold.


	10. Chapter 10

"Where exactly are we going?" Klaus is cold - well, colder than usual. He has his hands bundled up under his armpits to try and keep them warm.

"Why should I know, I was following you?" 

"Nu-uh! You're the one who wanted to leave, I thought you knew where to go!"

"No. If you recall, I wanted to wait and make a plan, and you did your whole, 'who needs a plan' and convinced me to leave right this second."

"Shut up, I did not do that."

"You totally did." Ben interrupts, and Klaus spins on his heel to glare at him, almost toppling over his own feet.  _ Reminder to self _ , he thinks,  _ hands under armpits is not great for balance. _

"Shut up Ben." 

Across the street from the three of them, an old lady frowns, Klaus sees it from the very corner of his eye. Truthfully, he hates old people.

They're the most difficult group to tell alive from dead. Klaus doesn't acknowledge her; instead, he slides one hand inelegantly out from where he'd been hiding it and grabs Five across the shoulder, dragging him towards the nearest corner shop.

Anything to get inside for two minutes.

"C'mon Five, you're the brainy one." 

"Well, I don't have any ideas." It sounds like a lie to Klaus.

Five huffs, his nose a bright cherry red against the pale of the rest of his skin. When he breathes out there is a puff of white like smoke and Klaus finds his fingers itching for a cigarette. Or a joint.

Anything smokeable really.

Which gives him an idea-

"What about, uh, what's-her-name?"

"Useful description there Klaus." Five grumbles, looking between the candy aisle and his wallet. Klaus didn't even know that they had a wallet - his cash is safely stored in the front of his sock. He hopes that's safe at least, someone at a house party had told him it was, but then again Kaylee had been high as balls when she'd mentioned it so-

Off-topic.

"You know, the tall one. With the uh, the pockets?"

"Tammy?" 

"Yes! Tammy! She was nice, she said we could stay with her."

"Who on Earth is Tammy?"

"Oh, Benny she's the coolest, she has actually cool tattoos instead of this shitty thing! I want one, Five you think she'd get me one?"

"What?" Five looks up from the candy, carrying three different bars of chocolate and a bag of sour skittles. Klaus beelines and grabs his own bag, dropping it atop Five's own.

"I want candy too!"

"Buy your own then, Klaus!" Five hisses but he doesn't put the skittles back so win? 

"But I don't have any money." He lies, voice tilting into a whine as he looks down at his brother. Damn, short and bundled up as Five is he looks young - younger than they really are.

Maybe he should get a haircut? Or grow it out? Klaus is leaning forwards to grab a strand when Ben startles him into almost tumbling into the display itself.

With an expertise that belies experience Five dodges out of the way.

"Why are you lying?" Ben asks him, hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans.

"Shut up, Ben!" 

He looks away, not wanting to see the blood-splattered down his brother's ghostly chest and across his face - why do ghosts always have to look so grotesque? It's not that he's upset at having Ben back - Klaus dragged him from whatever eternal rest, he has to at least be happy - but the gore gets to him.

"What's Ben saying?" Five asks mildly.

Strange. His brother is never mild.

* * *

Even high off his non-existent tits, there is a fire inside of Five, a sort of frenzy he's always suppressing. A drive that Klaus can't quite match. Sure, Klaus can acknowledge that he's erratic and energetic and prone to wandering at the best of times but-

It's aimless. 

Goals have never been something he's set for himself, there's never a desire to go somewhere. The best he has is an incessant craving for drugs, and he lets that guide him through life.

Has done for the last five years.

The thing is, it's difficult to set goals when you can't imagine yourself living a life when you're one foot in the grave at all times and tired enough that sometimes...

Sometimes he just wants to lie down in it.

"Nothing important! Telling us to buy real food, psh, party pooper."

"He's probably right."

"Nah, Ben's never right. Anyway, it's not like he needs to eat." 

Klaus shrugs lazily and pushes Five towards the checkout because the man standing behind them is beginning to stare at them with a twitch in his brow. The last thing Klaus wants is to be recognised in public - god only knows how that would go down.

"Rude," Ben says, hovering somewhere over his shoulder.

"Whatever,  _ Mein Bruder _ ." Klaus waves a hand at him and gestures for Five to pay.

The poor cashier looks delightfully confused, weighed down with a hint of exhaustion as Five dumps the candy in front of him.

"Shouldn't you be in school?" He asks Five after a moment.

"Fuck you." Five hisses as he grabs their stash and Klaus has to stop himself giggling wildly.

"What he means is we're done with school forever! Early graduates, you could say! Lucky lucky us!" He all but croons as he shoves Five towards the door, "Now Five, which way is Tammy's house?"

"Take a right." 

Klaus plucks a bag of skittles from his grip and nods.

It feels like there's a long road ahead of them.

* * *

"Klaus? Five?" It's dark by the time they reach Tammy's house, winter meaning that night has come in quick and fast, practically drowning the city.

Maybe that was the rain though. It had started about an hour ago and quickly soaked them through, leaving every inch of them drenched. Klaus had lost feeling in his toes ten minutes into the downpour, and he would bet his left nut that he's got blisters on both his heels.

If only he could feel them.

"Hey Tammy-Tam-Tam, was wondering if we could stay a night or two?" Klaus puts on his best charmer's smile because god knows Five isn't going to help him out here.

In fact, Five looks two minutes away from tearing Klaus's throat out, a familiar twitch in his eyebrow.

"You two finally ditched that deadbeat dad of yours?" Tammy drawls but steps aside so they can get inside. As always, Klaus admires her apartment, the type of colourful anarchy Klaus had only ever dreamt of. 

"Something like that darling," Klaus mimics her way of speaking and only glares a little when Ben grimaces and then mocks him in short order.

It's not like Tammy can hear his stupid ghost brother anyway.

"Well you know you're always welcome hon, go, get out of those wet things. I'm sure I can find something to put you both in." She winks, and Klaus fights off the urge to giggle.

Giggling is for preteen girls, and Klaus is a sophisticate, at least in the corners of his own mind. Maybe he'll always be a junkie, but he can at least pretend to be elegant with it: someone beautiful and avant-garde, a dramatic being in the most chaotic of ways.

It's bullshit but-

A person can dream, right?

Behind Tammy's back, Five mimes the urge to vomit and Klaus sticks a middle finger up at him before dragging him towards the bathroom. Tammy is the cleanest of the dealers and druggies they've hung around, and her apartment is cramped but warm.

Klaus is used to long hours in a crypt. In the cold and the dark, on stone floors trying to sleep as the rain seeps through. He thinks, in the private corners of his own psyche, that maybe it was good training for this. For being alone and without a home to turn to.

Something in him was always destined for the streets.

Unfortunately, despite all his posturing and pride, Five hasn't had the same experiences. He looks like a drowned cat, standing in Tammy's bathroom, borrowed towel over his shoulders, shaking to and fro. 

He should have been brilliant, Klaus tells himself some days, but instead, Five is here. Just like him.

It's almost funny, it makes his heart clench.

Klaus is great at picking up emotions in other people, but sometimes it's hard for him to understand his own. He doesn’t know what this feeling is and so he shoves it away, covers it up with his usual cheer.

"Get that frown off your little face, Five-io. Tammy is great!"

"She's better than some of your hookups."

"Shut up, I've not hooked up with her."

"Yeah, but you want to."

"What? No, I don't! She's just cool-"

" _ She's just cool. _ " Five mocks, roughly towelling at his hair after a few moments Klaus bites back a wince, turning away so that Five can't see his face. It's just stress, he wants to tell himself. Five is just cold and wet and tired.

Doesn't mean it doesn't hurt.

"Whatever Five-alive! Are you complaining about having a nice, warm house to stay in?" 

"...No."

"Then turn that frown upside down brother, we're out and free and living a fantastic life."

"Fuck off Klaus."

"Alright chill your shit."

The towel was wrapped around him like a blanket and Klaus turned to stare resolutely into the mirror in front of him, adjusting his water limp curls.

And then, he takes a spin on his heel and leaves the room. Five can stay behind if he's going to give attitude, stay in the bathroom by himself. Klaus just has to wait for the fire to burn itself low. Hopefully, Tammy will share a joint or three, and then Klaus can coax his brother from the bathroom like a half-drowned cat, promising to quiet the too fast ticking of his mind.

* * *

"Tammy! Love, I need, well-"

His towel is wrapped around his chest like a dress, and he flutters his eyelashes as he gestures at himself.

"Ah, Special-K! Let's get you dressed, hm?" Tammy is a tall girl - the type of girl that Klaus has eyed up and down, wondering if he wants to be her or simply be with her. Sometimes it's hard for him to tell.

For all his faux confidence, there's an insecurity in his own body, one that's gone bone-deep. Klaus will wear blouses and eyeliner and try his mother's heels, but he's never put on a skirt. Certainly never worn a dress. Just the thought has his heart beating faster.

For now, he ignores it.

"Tam, my angel, you read my mind."

"More like I saw ya shivering like a drowned rat, K. Here I got some stuff out, an' some of Eddie's old shit for your brother. I didn't think he'd be one for pink."

Klaus snorts out a laugh at that and takes the pink bundle that Tammy hands him.

Beneath his fingers, the fabric is soft like the petals of a tulip and Klaus vaguely recognises the clothes as pyjamas but they're nothing like he's ever worn before. The style brings to mind his childhood bedwear, button-up shirts and ankle-length trousers, but there's something more delicate here.

He blinks once.

"Aren't those girls pyjamas?" Ben says from somewhere behind Tammy and Klaus snaps his teeth towards his brother.

"Alright, alright, sorry-" Ben's hands go up in apology and Tammy's eyebrow follows the gesture.

"You okay, Klaus?"

"What? Ah, ah Tammy, Tam, Tamlin, Tammy. I am fine. Disgustingly sober but... living. You wouldn't happen to have something to take off the edge, would you?"

He puts on his best pleading face.

It's not a great one, considering his hair is still absently dripping water down his forehead, and his makeup is bound to be smudged. In the mirror, he'd looked like a raccoon.

And not a healthy one.

* * *

Once, their Father had taken them out into the country for some training exercise. A survival expedition of sorts - they had been ten.

Luther had been in charge because Luther was always in charge, but it was the first time they'd had such a full-on activity since getting their names. Before that, he'd always been Number One. 

It had been getting close to winter, not unlike now really. The cold had been setting in, and they'd been given a tent and a compass and left there in the middle of the woods and told to find their way home. Even Luther had paled when their Father walked away into the trees.

"No, you're holding the ma-map, the map, wrong One." Diego had been insisting, both he and Allison perched over Luther's shoulders.

"Who cares about the stupid map." Klaus had muttered to no one in particular. The best thing about being in a new place was that none of the ghosts knew about him, and not being known about meant they couldn't bother him.

He'd found his way to the edge of the clearing to wait—no use getting involved in an argument between the top three, especially over something like a map. How would he even know if they were reading the map right? All the words and lines and colours made his head hurt.

Ben and Five had also been crouched together, poking at the compass their Father had left them.

"So it always points north?"

"That's what Pogo said."

"But what if I wanna go south?" 

"Then you go the opposite direction, Six."

Nerds.

* * *

Klaus had pulled his coat tighter around him and sighed, crouching down against one of the trees - if there was anything the mausoleum had taught him it was that staying small and hunched together helped conserve heat. Sometimes it got ghastly and cold, and there was little Klaus hated more than the cold.

He was used to it, though.

It had taken him a while to notice the creature next to him.

Or, what was left of it.

At ten, he hadn't known what the animal was called, but it had been grey and white and dark around the eyes. Something red was matting it's fur, not long dried by the looks of it. 

Dead people? Klaus had seen plenty of them from the plain to the gory to the downright disgusting, but he'd never seen a dead animal before. Did animals have ghosts? Probably not, if he'd never encountered them, but then he'd never thought about it before. Animals weren't exactly something that ranked high on his Father's list of priorities, and he knew Allison had never managed to get the cat she'd wanted at four or five. 

This thing looked a little like a cat if he squinted - if cats had hands maybe.

Later, he'd learn that the animal was called a racoon, but as he stared at its body, all he could feel was sad and slightly curious. 

Klaus picked up a stick and poked at it. Unsurprisingly, it didn't do much, other than get pushed back by the force exerted on it by Klaus's touch, however indirect.

They'd been learning physics that week.

"Weird." He'd muttered, staring at it before prodding it again. It was stiff, rigor mortis had settled in, and Klaus wondered how long the creature had been dead. In humans, a body got cold and stiff somewhere between two and six hours after death - his Father had told him that - but he didn't know how long it took for an animal like this.

It was small, compared to a man.

_ I'm small too _ , Klaus had thought,  _ compared to a man _ .

Even then, he'd had dark circles around his eyes, and that felt familiar too, a strange sort of kinship.

* * *

"Four, come on!" 

And then Luther had been in his ear, a strong hand on his arm, tight enough to bruise.

"Ew, Four had a dead animal!" Allison's voice had been going through a shrill phase, and Klaus clenched his jaw to keep it from wobbling.

He didn't have a dead animal. He'd just wanted to see it. Think about it.

Everyone always told him he didn't think enough.

"F-Four, that's gross."

"Shut up! I was only looking at it! And my name is Klaus!" 

Maybe it had been shock that allowed him to wrench his arm out of Luther's grip. Out of all of them, Klaus always had the hardest time escaping his largest brother. It wasn't that he wasn't quick or flexible, just that he was skinny.

Weak. 

He'd never wanted to fight.

Whatever it was, he'd pulled himself free, storming off past his brothers and sister with a huff in a random direction into the woods. 

"Klaus, stop-" 

"Shut up Ben." 

"Four you're going the wrong way."

"You can shut up too, Number One." He rolls his eyes and doesn't bother looking where he's going. Maybe it's the wrong way. Who's to say there's even a right way?

Maybe they've just been left here to rot.

He's not looking where he's going, and it's certainly not because there are tears in his eyes. Sometimes he really hates his family.

"Four, you need to stop."

A flash of blue and Five is there, Five with his big words and chin tilt, Five who's always been better than him. Always will be.

"Leave me alone!"

"You can't just walk off into the woods!" 

"Watch me, Five! Oh, I'm Five, I'm too good for a real name, just-just go away!" 

Klaus wonders if there's something wrong with him. Everyone always looks at him like there's something wrong inside of him, even when he's being quiet, especially when he's being loud. It feels like he can never do right.

He wondered then if the racoon had had a family. Siblings. Brothers and sisters who looked down on him, if maybe that had been why he'd died. Red and grey and all alone.

Around Five he'd stepped, it felt as though his feet had a mind of their own because they wouldn't stop moving. Ahead, ahead, they'd cried. If he stopped-

* * *

If he stopped, he'd start crying, and he was so tired of crying all the time. It made his Father angry, it made his siblings annoyed.

"Four!" Five was in front of him again.

To most people, his teleporting was startling, but Klaus had always been used to random figures appearing out of nowhere. People who had previously been nothing but empty space doing their best to surprise him, intentionally or not.

Sometimes it did shock him.

Okay, most of the time it shocked him, but angry as he was, it barely registered through the haze. Five wasn't there, and then he was, it made no difference to him.

Klaus couldn't stop walking. Five was in front of him, and that meant Five was in his way, and he was angry. All he'd wanted to do was look at the animal - he hadn't been bothering anyone! 

He hadn't.

"Four, stop!"

"Oh, go and do one, Five!" Before he could register what he was doing his hands were out in front of him, and then they were on Five's chest as he pushed.

Five obviously hadn't registered that either - Klaus was rarely one to turn physical. When he wanted to win something, he resorted to underhanded tactics and his own words, derived from brutal insights. Allison was similar, but there was something in his sister that also enjoyed giving someone a good wallop when she was annoyed.

Five stumbled back, one step and then another.

It had been winter, a cold one. 

A wet one.

They'd only been ten, Five went back and back, losing his footing in the damp, slick underbrush of the woods. Piles of what had once been dead leaves having long since rotted away to a muddy slurry.

They'd been on a hill.

And then Klaus had been on a hill, and Five had been at the bottom of it. And then Five had been at the bottom of it and crying. And then Five had been at the bottom of it and crying, and Klaus had been on the hill by himself until his siblings rushed past.

And then Klaus had been on the hill by himself.

And then he'd thought of the dead animal and gone  _ oh _ . 

Five had lived, of course. A bump on his head, a sprained ankle - little worse than they usually got in training, only then they'd been alone in the woods, and Luther had had to carry Five the whole expedition. 

"You're lucky I have super strength." Number One had said, tone dripping with derision as he stared at Klaus, somehow a boast and an insult all in one.

Klaus had stared at his feet. All the words had gone out of him, and all he'd been able to do was nod morosely - no one complained when he stayed at the back of the group.

_ Oh _ , he'd thought.  _ Oh. _

_ 'As for me, I go on.  _

_ Alone now. Forever alone.' _

* * *

In the present, he is not a healthy racoon. And he is not alone. 

Part of him is still at the back of the group though, staring at the mud, staring at the woman in front of him and aching, staring at his own reflection.

He wonders if she notices - if she does, Tammy does a good job of hiding her reaction. 

"You really gotta ask, K, I know you're good for it." She winks at him and waves him off to change. "I'll get you one rolled, I think you deserve it, you little drowned thing."

Klaus grins, and it is plastered on, but if he wears it long enough, it will become real. It will. He has to convince himself of that.

"I don't like her. She's..." Ben trails off and so Klaus ignores him as he bursts through into the bathroom and throws a load of clothes in the vague direction of his brother. Five is sat on the toilet. 

"Cheer up, Tammy leant us some clothes! And a joint."

"It's not pink, is it?"

"The joint? I doubt it? Can you even get pink skins?"

"I meant the clothes Klaus."

"Oh, no, they're Eddie's."

"Eddie?"

"Hm... blond boy, you remember? He was like our age, I dunno where he went. Probably moved on."

Klaus shrugs and drops his own towel - it's nothing they haven't seen before. For years, they'd shared baths and then showers and communal changing rooms. If Klaus was ever embarrassed about his brothers seeing his body, he would have lost that shame long ago.

Five stands from the toilet and sighs, picking up the pile of clothes from the floor. They're definitely not his style but closer than what Klaus has, black sweat pants and a hoodie long enough to drown him. 

"He just left his clothes here?"

"Bro, chill, he probably packed light. It's just clothes, you can always replace them."

Five sighs and then dresses, one foot after the other. Arm in and then head out. 

He looks... different.

* * *

Klaus pauses in buttoning up his own silky shirt to stare. In all his life, he can't remember seeing Five in something so casual. Even their workout clothes at home had been specifically tailored, meant to emulate the uniforms they wore on the training missions.

So they'd know the limits of their clothing. So they could learn to work around them.

"What?" Five hisses.

"Chill! Jeez, how many times do I have to say it? You gonna bite my head off for everything. Just thinking you're gonna have to roll the bottom of those pants up."

He does his shirt up quickly and follows it with the pyjama pants, the fabric cool against his skin. Klaus bites his cheek when he feels the coarse hair of his legs catch.

It's fine.

"Pass me some toilet roll will you, I wanna wipe my face."

"You do look like a raccoon. I guess that eyeliner wasn't as waterproof as it claimed." Five deadpans, rubbing his hands together but passing him a few sheets.

Klaus feels something in his chest tighten. Like a screw being twisted one too many times.

"Yeah. Yeah." 

"You know, you don't have to wear that stuff," Ben interjects.

"I like it, Ben."

"It makes you look like... you look older."

"Maybe that's the point, ghost boy. Some of us don't wanna look like a baby forever, sorry bro."

He can't see it, but he'd put money on Five's eyebrow twitching behind him.

"You better have been referring to Ben then-"

"Oh, sure. Sure Five. Definitely Ben." He giggles as he finishes clearing most of the makeup from his face. For something that had run like the devil in heaven in the rain, it seems stubborn to budge under Klaus's scrubbing.

Fucking makeup.

Five groans at him and grabs him by the arm. It is a familiar grip, a pull to his push. Klaus wonders if it'll bruise.

At ten, Luther had been strong enough to bruise him. It had ached something fierce for weeks. Klaus had never said anything. He'd taken it as a punishment, alongside the actual punishment - a day in the crypt as assigned by his Father.

It had been fine. 

It's fine now, he lets Five pull him forward and smirks as they enter Tammy's front room, a gleam in his eyes.

"Hey, boys." She winks at them and pats the second seat of the sofa. Contrary to always, Five sits on the floor instead.

Tammy doesn't blink, and Klaus rolls his eyes, collapsing into the squishy sofa - it's soft enough it feels like it's trying to eat him whole.

"Got ya a treat, K. One for Five too, if he wants it."

"Course he wants it, Tammy," Klaus says, rolling his eyes as Five perks up a little, leans forwards at the promise of the drug. An arm settles itself around Klaus's shoulders, nails trailing down his arm.

He doesn't blink as she drops a joint in his hand. 

"You want it, Five?" Klaus has the joint halfway to his mouth when Tammy leans forward and brings him with her.

"Yeah, I want it... what do you want?" Five squints, suspicion obvious on his face.

"Nothing! I was just making sure." 

"Loosen up, bro!" Klaus leans to the side and grabs a lighter off the coffee table, running his fingers across the plastic - lime green and speckled with pink dots.

It's not one he's used before, but somehow there's a familiar weight to it in his hand.

"I really don't like this, Klaus, maybe you should go home." Ben, ghostly as ever, worries in the corner. He's sat - as sat as a spirit can get - on what looks to be a beanbag.

He doesn't look happy about it.

Klaus doesn't give him a verbal reply because he's too busy lighting the joint, waving his hand in Ben's direction. Thankfully this doesn't look too odd, what with Five also being sat in that way and the lighter lands in Five's lap.

"C'mon, it's been weeks. Let's get fucking blazed and forget about the stupid storm and our douche of a Dad." He tells Five, and finally, his brother relaxes a little. Let's his tense shoulders drop.

"Fine, fine. Pass the joint, then Tammy."

"Sorry he's been in a bad mood, Tammy my dear, we were locked up for like three weeks, and Five-o has never done well in containment."

"Like you're any better!"

"Least I didn't have my pissy pants on."

Tammy squeezes his shoulders, and she grins, her body warm where it's pressed against his own.

"Not a problem, hon. You're both peaches, I'm just glad you have somewhere to stay, even if it's on my couch."

"Hopefully we won't be in your hair for long," Five says around a mouthful of smoke and Klaus can only shrug to that. He's got no plans, no purpose beyond 'have fun, stay high, avoid the ghosts'. If Five has other ideas, Klaus will follow them until they conflict with his own.

And probably beyond then too.

What can he say, he loves his brother when it comes down to the wire, he just hopes he loves Five more than the drugs. He hopes.

**Author's Note:**

> Please comment and Kudos if you like!! You can follow me on [@forestdivinity](https://forestdivinity.tumblr.com/) for more content!
> 
> Special thanks to [Elliot's House discord](https://discord.gg/dGg2Tb) for helping me with this! 
> 
> And many thanks to [@Nucci](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nucci) for being an amazing Beta and helping me refine this fic!


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